There was yet another failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Sunday, this time at the private golf course at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida.

Now a former U.S. Secret Service agent has come forward to assert that his former agency has "absolutely dropped the ball" in its efforts to keep the former president and current Republican nominee safe from harm, according to the Daily Mail.

The critique comes even as the Secret Service is otherwise receiving praise for foiling the planned attack after agents scouting ahead of Trump spotted and fired upon the would-be gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who was lying in wait for the former president in the tree line along one of the course's holes.

What is known about the would-be shooter

According to the Associated Press, Routh, who was armed with an SKS semiautomatic rifle, was arrested by local authorities shortly after he was forced to abandon his ambush position near former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago golf course.

Best described as a political misfit who espoused views that ranged across the ideological spectrum, Routh initially voted for Trump in 2016 but later shifted his support to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, became a fervent supporter of the Ukraine war effort, and even urged rival foreign nations like Iran to try to assassinate the former president he once supported.

He also had a lengthy criminal record that included dozens of misdemeanors and a few felony convictions, which barred him from legally purchasing and possessing any firearms, and his previously stated threats of violence and unhinged behavior had prompted multiple reports to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies about the potential danger he posed.

The "feds absolutely dropped the ball, once again"

During an episode of "The Ingraham Angle" this week on Fox News, host Laura Ingraham referenced the reports about Routh being a known threat to the FBI and law enforcement and wondered both why he hadn't previously been arrested and charged as well as why the Secret Service hadn't taken more precautions in protecting former President Trump, particularly after the near-fatal shooting of Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Ingraham's guest, former Secret Service agent Rich Staropoli, who said the "feds absolutely dropped the ball, once again, and this is the reason why local law enforcement -- for years -- has a tremendous distrust and quite frankly hates the FBI."

"What did they do here? They went out, they interviewed this guy, they closed the case, they put it on a shelf," he continued. "How about calling the Secret Service? How about notifying local law enforcement for some follow-up? Yet it wasn't done. This is another blatant case where the FBI was supposed to be sharing information but wasn't."

Staropoli noted that, after the two recent attempts on Trump's life, the Secret Service is now also being viewed with suspicion and contempt by local law enforcement agencies, and asserted, "The level of distrust and hatred by local law enforcement of the Secret Service has compounded the problem and has made it exponentially more difficult for the Secret Service to do their job."

Can keep former presidents safe in warzones, but not on a golf course?

Later in the Fox News interview, the former Secret Service complained that the agency has been politicized at all levels and is "broken" and "not doing their job" as they're supposed to.

He recalled escorting former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush to Pakistan and Iraq, respectively, and marveled at how they were kept safe in actual warzones with ever-present threats but that the Secret Service now appeared incapable of doing the same thing domestically.

"You're telling me that the Secret Service, with a $4 billion budget and 7,000 employees, can't predict and can't pre-post an event that's going to happen on a golf course that the former president not only owns but has been golfing on every Sunday for the last 20 years?" Staropoli said.

As to how the Secret Service and FBI have seemingly mishandled the investigation of the first assassination attempt against Trump in July, the former agent declared, "They have left totally unresolved questions and have fed into conspiracy theories that we will be talking about 50 and 60 years from now. This could have all been avoided if the acting director of the Secret Service simply would have stepped in front of the cameras right from the offset. But they don't do it, they hide behind the administration."