The following is the transcript of the interview with CBS News national security correspondent Sam Vinograd and CBS News law enforcement analyst AT Smith that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on April 26, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to Samantha Vinograd. She was a top homeland security official in the Biden administration. Is now a national security contributor here at CBS and AT Smith is a former deputy director of the secret service and now a CBS law enforcement analyst and joins us from Greenville, South Carolina. Good to have you both here. Sam, you were in the room with us, sheltering with some of our colleagues, as I understand it, you were close to the perimeter and able to detect some of what was happening. I was struck, national guard was there, secret service was there, private security was there, national guard was there. The perimeter of the security went out pretty darn far. There were protests surrounding the building. There weren’t just protests about Trump. There were protests around Jeffrey Epstein. There were protests about the corporation that owns this news network. There were protests about the Iran war. How did you assess the security situation last night?
SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: Well, Margaret, I think a lot of us are waking up this morning and asking the basic question of, is anywhere safe? And the reality is that in this country, we are facing the most complex threat environment in our nation’s history, in particular, from lone actors, individuals who radicalized to violence, often online. In this scenario, two things can be true. It can be true that law enforcement and intelligence professionals prepared exhaustively for last night, weeks of planning, intelligence gathering, physical security barriers, officers on site. But it can also be true that in this moment in this security environment, the paradigms of the past may not be sufficient to meet the moment, and with that in mind, security professionals as well as private citizens need to rethink what it is going to take to actually secure these mass gatherings where there are so many protectees, and what it’s going to take to secure communities.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s frightening. I mean, AT – we were in a room with the most heavily guarded man in the world, and yet this happened. The acting attorney general said the system worked. In your view, did the system work?
AT SMITH: The system did work in terms of what the secret service trains to do every day when it comes to covering and evacuating a protectee, and as you saw the security plan, there – had the scenario where the president and the vice president exited different ways. They exited in different ways than the normal folks had come into the gathering, having said that the secret service, as I’ve said many times, no one is more critical of themselves than the secret service. So they’re going to have to look at this very diligently, in terms of this individual, how he was able to run that magnetometer as he did, and get as close as he did with two firearms. That is not acceptable, and they will have to try to figure that part out. And, you know, see what – what the intelligence and the investigation is going to bring, in terms of what this individual’s history was, and then, as you said earlier, Margaret try to figure out exactly how he got those guns into the hotel. Did he avoid, as you said, you know, taking an airplane to get there? And by using a train and so forth, was able to secrete them in some way and get him there. So, it’s a it’s a tough thing. The secret service was very successful in how they did that. And as Sam said, the perimeter around the hotel was exhaustive. But again, anytime you have a breach like this, you’ve just got to address it and be your worst, you know, critic.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, AT, I was speaking with some of our producers before the program. Many of us have traveled with the president in the past, and past presidents and other high level officials. When the president goes overseas or the vice president, they typically take over an entire hotel. secret service really locks the place down. That didn’t happen last night here on US soil. Is that the kind of thing we’re going to start seeing, that it’ll be more sort of like an Israeli model?
AT SMITH: You may have to, particularly, you know, it’s difficult because you have, obviously a hotel that’s open to the public. They have other guests that are unassociated with the event last night, and they are going to have to take a hard look at how you maybe screen those guests coming in. It’s very hard to necessarily know everything about everybody that’s there, but probably one safety scenario would be what you just said to more or less lock down the hotel. We don’t normally do that in the United States. And usually the secret service is very successful at coordinating and sort of corralling that area, like the ballroom that’s, you know, going to be used for the event, and making it secure. But again, they’ll have to take a look at that. And I said also that, you know, this was not a national special security event, but the planning, preparation, the weeks of work, really align it to that kind of a security plan. So I’m sure, in terms of perimeters, that was all done.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Sam, I think you make such a great point, which is, essentially, you can’t protect against the unexpected, right? Can’t protect against everything. We’ve talked about this though. I mean as parents, as human beings, and being in that room, so many of those lawmakers, so many of those journalists, are dehumanized. They are attacked online. They are attacking each other. You have a high level of animosity in the public space, people were united in the president said he wasn’t wrong in using that word, because they were all scared of what was going to happen next. I don’t know how we solve for that as a society, because it seems to have really seeped in to our politics and to our conversations. I mean, it is just the new normal.
SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: Every time an incident like this happens, the optimist in me thinks, perhaps this will be a turning point. Perhaps this will be a turning point where each and every person in this country thinks about what they say and how they act. Words do matter, certainly. At the same time, whenever an incident like this happens, and I say this Margaret as a mother and as a security professional, I hope that it is also a wake up call to law enforcement professionals to rethink whether additional steps are needed, like perhaps screening guests coming into a public venue at a mass gathering with a lot of protectees. But that it is also a wake up call to every person in this country to understand that they have a role to play in our homeland security while law enforcement looks at whether additional protocols are needed at various sites, every viewer, every person in this country, needs to say something when they see something, an individual in their circle, at their workplace, in their family, is demonstrating signs that they could be going down a pathway to violence. They need to ask for help from a law enforcement professional or other trained official, and we need to really devote all the resources that we can to ensuring that the integration between state and local and federal officials is not just where it was before, but tighter than ever, so that we can try to prevent these incidents from happening in the future.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Sam, I’m glad you’re safe. I’m glad you’re with us. AT, thank you, very much for your insights. We’ll be right back.
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