A deadly confrontation at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, over the weekend is the latest in a string of high-profile security incidents involving President Donald Trump. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
"But if you look at Butler and the two incidents at Mar-a-Lago, those were super low-tech attacks," Gage said. "The low-tech actors are the ones that tend to slip through the cracks."
He also warned of a potential copycat effect when details of such incidents become public.
"If it were up to the Secret Service, they would never report any of these incidents ever," Gage said, arguing that widespread coverage allows others to "study what happened" and attempt to refine it.
In today’s hyperconnected political climate, he said, that dynamic adds another layer of complexity for agents trying to stop the next threat before it materializes.
In the early hours of Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, a 21-year-old man identified as Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina was shot and killed by U.S. Secret Service agents and a local sheriff’s deputy after entering the secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Authorities say Martin drove through the north gate carrying a shotgun and a gasoline can. After being ordered to drop both, he dropped the can but raised the shotgun toward officers, who fired and killed him at the scene. Trump and First lady Melania Trump were in Washington at the time.
The incident marked the third highly publicized security encounter involving Trump in less than two years. In July 2024, a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing Trump’s ear and killing an attendee before being shot by a Secret Service sniper. In September 2024, a man armed with a rifle was confronted by agents near Trump’s golf course while he was playing; that suspect was later convicted on attempted assassination charges.
While the incidents have drawn intense attention, former Deputy Assistant Director Don Mihalek said the latest Mar-a-Lago intrusion does not necessarily signal a breakdown in protective systems.
"He got through an exterior gate of an active club," Mihalek told Fox News Digital. "This wasn’t someone reaching the president’s residence." Agents confronted the suspect within seconds, he said, describing the rapid response as evidence that overlapping security layers functioned as designed.
Mihalek said presidential protection relies on multiple rings of security because outer perimeters at properties like Mar-a-Lago cannot be sealed in the same way as the White House. "If he ended up in the president’s house on Mar-a-Lago, that might be a different conversation," he said.
He also cautioned against viewing recent incidents in isolation, noting that presidents routinely face roughly 2,000 threats per year, most of which are mitigated before the public ever becomes aware of them. "These just happen to be very public instances," Mihalek said, arguing that the social media era amplifies perceptions of escalation.
Barricades go up around the Capitol ahead of the State of the Union. (Kylie Cooper/Reuters)
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Gage, who previously led advance planning for State of the Union addresses, said the event operates under a well-established security "blueprint" built to account for worst-case scenarios. "There’s really no way to increase it anymore," he said.
Both former officials said the defining challenge for presidential protection today is unpredictability: individuals with minimal training, rudimentary weapons and the ability to find reinforcement online. Unlike organized extremist networks, such actors may leave few detectable signals before acting.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/former-secret-service-officials-warn-low-tech-threats-after-latest-mar-a-lago-breach