Show Notes
Who will fix what’s wrong with the US Secret Service?
Months after two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania and on a golf course at Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service’s new director Sean Curran issued a “zero tolerance for distractions” order to all Secret Service officers. The order, coming in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, was publicized by GAI Fellow and RealClearPolitics reporter Susan Crabtree recently.
On the most recent episode of her new podcast “On Background,” Crabtree and co-host Eric Eggers explore the state of the Secret Service, the uniformed and plain-clothes protectors of America’s political leaders. Crabtree has reported extensively on Secret Service issues for many years.
After a rundown on the problems at the agency, they bring in Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), whose committee has been pressing the service on its performance since last year. “It was such a massive failure,” Blackburn tells the hosts. “It was only God’s blessing that President Trump came away from that day and survived that attack.”
New director Curran’s internal memo last week to Secret Service staff laid it on the line: “Let me be clear, politically motivated attacks in our nation are increasing—seemingly every day. The men and women of the Secret Service must be focused on being the solution, not adding to the problem. We must operate every day without bias towards political affiliation. We owe it to ourselves and those we are sworn to protect. Any distractions, otherwise, will not be tolerated.”
“Pete Hegseth is setting a high bar and pressuring other national security agencies to up their game and get rid of some of the woke policies that were so prevalent from the Biden administration,” Crabtree says.
And there have been a lot of embarrassments lately, she relates.
- Last month, an agent she describes as “African American and very overweight,” fell asleep while on duty at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. The same agent also left his fully automatic rifle unattended while he used the bathroom.
- In late May, in another story Crabtree broke, two female uniformed USSS agents got into a “cat fight” in front of former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC home.
- Over Labor Day weekend, Secret Service agents missed a Glock handgun that was in a member’s bag during security screening at Donald Trump’s golf course in Sterling, Virginia. Fortunately, the Glock was being carried by a club member.
- In September, a USSS agent celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. Anthony Pough, a Secret Service agent, wrote in a Facebook post on Sept. 10 that Kirk “spewed hate and racism on his show.” He was placed on leave.
- Most recently, when Trump went to a local restaurant in Washington, Code Pink protesters were tipped off and interrupted his visit, chanting and rushing his table. The Secret Service was slow to react to the disturbance and clear the protestors, as video footage showed.
Crabtree notes that while the US military has been seeing record-level recruitment since Defense Sec. Hegseth ended diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the military. Secret Service recruitment has not gone well.
“We want female law enforcement that are up to the challenge and can perform,” Crabtree says. The problem with DEI programs in such a “no failure” job, however, is that they that agenda can take precedence over screening tests that would weed out applicants who are not physically or psychologically equipped for the job of literally laying your life on the line for a protectee.
Recruitment has been a problem for several years now but got worse during the Biden administration. Its previous director, Kimberly Cheadle, who was hand-picked for the job by First Lady Jill Biden and took Biden’s diversity initiatives very literally, promising to have 30% of its agents be women by 2030. Cheadle resigned under pressure following the Butler incident.
Rashid Ellis, a Secret Service agent, spoke out in February against the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which he says contributed to the first assassination attempt against President Trump last summer, which Crabtree previously reported.
“I believe agendas have taken priority at the United States Secret Service for a long time, which is why Butler and July 13 happened and why we got a president get shot,” Ellis said then.
Eggers comments that so often, “today’s problems are yesterday’s solutions.”
Sen. Blackburn says “Kim Cheadle and her chief of staff had that ‘30 by 30’ program. If that is your goal, then you’re taking your eye off your core mission. You are no longer meeting your prescribed mission.”
That chief of staff under Cheadle, a woman named Kyo Dolan, got a promotion at USSS and is now its chief of operations.
Blackburn responds, “Anyone connected with the failures at Butler that endangered President Trump should be fired. It was such a massive failure. It was only God’s blessing that President Trump came away from that day and survived that attack.”
