By Brian Freeman | Sunday, 26 April 2026 04:50 PM EDT
The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner should prompt the Secret Service to reconsider whether it is wise for President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to attend the same events, Rep. Michael McCaul said on Sunday.
The Texas Republican noted that “the takeaway I got was the line of succession. You had the president and the vice president at the head table, both of them together, and the speaker of the House [Rep. Mike Johnson]. Had an explosive device gone off, you would have knocked out the president, vice president, speaker. The three in line of succession.”
McCaul added that 92-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley, as the president pro tempore of the Senate, “would be the president had they all been taken out.”
He emphasized: “I think the Secret Service needs to reconsider having both the president and vice president together.”
McCaul, who attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, praised the Secret Service and Capitol police for their work, stating: “the Secret Service did an extraordinary job as did the Capitol police.” However, he critiqued the outer perimeter security.
He pointed out: “You could walk into the hotel because it’s an open hotel, but you could walk in without going through a magnetometer. That’s something, like, when we go to the Munich Security Conference, for instance, there’s always a magnetometer outside the hotel before you go in.”
