Trump Accuses Biden-Harris Administration of Failing to ‘Properly Protect Me’

After initially praising the Secret Service following the near-miss assassination attempt this month, former President Donald J. Trump for the first time blamed his political rivals, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, for failing to protect him.

“The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy,” Mr. Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social, on Tuesday.

The comments indicate the Trump team intends to continue raising questions about the Secret Service over the security lapses that put Mr. Trump’s life in danger. But his remarks also suggest the former president and his team will more aggressively turn the assassination attempt into a political cudgel to be used against the administration and Ms. Harris, who is likely to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the presidential race.

Mr. Trump has told associates he has full confidence in his own Secret Service detail — and he thanked them in a social media post shortly after the shooting — but his team has long-running tensions with the agency. Those tensions are related to requests for additional resources that were denied. Over roughly two years, a number of requests for items like additional metal detectors and specially trained dogs were turned down, according to a campaign official.

Even a request for metal detectors while Mr. Trump attended his son Barron’s high school graduation was initially rebuffed, a campaign official said, though it was eventually granted.

In the immediate days after the shooting, agency officials initially denied that such requests had been turned down. But in a statement to The New York Times on July 20, they acknowledged that some requests had indeed been