Retired Secret Service agent reacts to assassination attempt on Donald Trump

Like many, Robert Caltabiano received a text message Saturday evening and quickly turned on the television to watch the aftermath of the attempted assassination of a former president.

“I was shocked I was scared,” he said. “I was dismayed, and I was angry and that's all still with me to today two days later as to where we're going as a country, what we're doing, the visceral hate, and then obviously the blame game starts.”

The retired U.S. Secret Service agent is still grappling with Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

Caltabiano served 27 years protecting U.S. presidents and their wives, including the Bush family, working as a special agent in charge and an investigator on protective missions.

NBC 5 asked him to provide insight on the weekend shooting that left one rally attendee dead, two others injured, and Mr. Trump with a wound to his right ear.

Caltabiano commends Trump for following training and getting down on the floor.

He says Secret Service agents were quick and effective in their response.

As for scrutiny over the gunman on the unsecured roof, the breakdown in communication and action well before the first shots rang out, Caltabiano says that was “a catastrophic failure.”

“That failure in of itself should not have happened,” he said. “There'll be a blame game. I've heard where the Secret Service is blaming the law local law enforcement or vice versa. At the end of the day, the blame stays on the Secret Service. When they go into a town, they are responsible for the overall security whether it's inside what you call a perimeter or even the outer sides.”

Caltabiano joins many Americans and some lawmakers in questioning the amount of resources provided to Trump’s Secret Service detail.

“They probably did not get what they really needed, which means the manpower, other certain things that I can't talk about on that, and so that's a catastrophic event,” he said.

Whether there was a breakdown in communication between the elite protection service and local law enforcement, Caltabiano expects lasting changes to how the agency operates.

“We had to study the Reagan assassination [attempt] in my academy class,” he recalled. “We had to go over to the hotel, and work there for the day, and actually be part of that, and I think that in Pennsylvania now that will become a training mission for the Secret Service in many aspects so we can learn from those mistakes.”

During the March 1981 assassination attempt, secret service agents quickly pushed an [unknowingly] injured President Ronald Reagan into his presidential limousine and rushed to a local hospital as other agents and local police detained the gunman and tended to the wounded.

During Saturday’s rally, a bloodied-face Trump got to his feet enveloped by agents and still managed to face supporters with a fist in the air, mouthing the words ‘Fight. Fight. Fight.’

The searing image has led some people to question why agents allowed Trump to expose himself during a still-unfolding emergency.

“Unfortunately, he's a six foot almost four individual who is going to do what he’s going to do,” he said. “It would be very hard for you to crowd him at that moment, and you know the staging of it didn't look good, but those agents, again, what were they to do? They could have tried to throw them on the floor again, but he's a 78-year-old man also who just got shot.”

Caltabiano says he knows Trump personally and expects the former president to get back to rallying supporters, albeit cautiously.

“I think that just like Reagan was, [Trump’s] going to be a little bit of a changed man,” he said.