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U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday that the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump over the weekend at a political rally was a security “failure” that could not be allowed to happen again.

“When I say that something like this cannot happen, we are talking about failure,” Mayorkas told CNN.

“We will be looking, through an independent review, at how this happened, why it happened, and we will make recommendations and conclusions to ensure that this does not happen again. I couldn’t be clearer,” he added.

Mayorkas told ABC News in a separate interview that it should not have been possible for the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, to fire up to eight bullets from a high-powered assault weapon at Trump as he did from the rooftop of a nearby business.

The suspect’s vantage point was about 150 metres from where the former president was speaking on Saturday night in the small community of Butler, Pennsylvania, in the eastern United States.

“A direct line of sight like that to the former president should not occur,” Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas added.

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