A look back at security at President Trump’s rally in Wildwood, NJ

On Saturday, the world watched and reacted to an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania.

Just two months prior, Mr. Trump held a large rally on the beach in Wildwood that was attended by tens of thousands of people.

Following the events that unfolded last night, I found myself looking through the hundreds of pictures that I took on the beach that afternoon and I started making some comparisons and observations between those two events.

I attended the Wildwood rally as a credentialed member of the media for WPG Talk Radio 95.5. As such, I was on the elevated press riser right in the middle of the crowd along with other members of the media.

From there, I had an unobstructed 360-degree view of the entire area. That's where all of these pictures were taken from.

The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man Pennsylvania, as the person who attempted to assassinate former President Trump by shooting him from a rooftop about 400 feet away.

In the pictures that I took at the Wildwood rally, I noticed a hundred or so people on a second-story balcony of an establishment right on the boardwalk.

Those people, who I estimated to be about 900 feet from where Mr. Trump spoke, had an unobstructed view of the former president, and to the best of my knowledge, did not have to go through Secret Service-level security to be there (if I'm wrong about that recollection, please let me know).

These were people who simply got to that business early, got a great seat, and could see everything.

I also noticed the lack of (visible) law enforcement officers on the the rooftops of those boardwalk businesses.

You'll also notice the large crowd that watched the rally on the ramps between the boardwalk and beach. Those people would also have not been screened by the Secret Service -- that didn't happen until you were in the middle of the beach by the entrance to the rally area itself.

I don't want to give the impression that this was a totally unsecure area. There were hundreds of local, county, state, and federal law enforcement officers all over the beach and boardwalk, not to mention the countless undercover officers that were walking around and the New Jersey state troopers that were in the air.

And that does include the insane level of security that was immediately around Mr. Trump when he arrived in Wildwood.

After Trump was shot, you may have seen two officers/agents like this one at the rally in Wildwood who immediately jumped on stage.

The purpose of this writing is not to disparage the Secret Service or any law enforcement agency nor to second-guess how they operate. I'm simply sharing some pictures and observations at face value. You can make your own guesses as to what goes into making gatherings of this size as safe as possible.

I hate to say it, but what happened in Pennsylvania could have happen anywhere.

Protecting a president, current or former, is an insane job that only a small handful of people on the entire planet can do. And even on the best of days, we all walk a fine line between freedom and safety.