OPINION:
On July 13, Americans watched the horrific video of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump was shot in the ear but otherwise unscathed and may come away from the incident politically stronger. The gunman was killed — too late to save Corey Comperatore, an innocent member of the crowd who was killed, covering his wife and daughter from the bullets. Too late for others who were injured.
Americans saw brave Secret Service agents shield the former president from the gunfire and lead him from the stage, admirably doing what they’re trained to do. But there is much — on video and off — that went terribly wrong that day.
Ultimately, the attempt was a failure of the Secret Service, which came within a centimeter of utter disaster. Other, more knowledgeable people have asked the tactical questions, and procedures will be reexamined and tightened. Some people may even be fired, though accountability seems scarce in the Biden administration.
The Secret Service has one main mission: the safety of the people in its charge. It must achieve that with single-minded attention, even ruthlessness, because the stakes couldn’t be higher. But there are troubling indications that the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that have eroded excellence in so many professions and institutions may have found they way into the Secret Service.
There have been calls for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign. Ms. Cheatle, the agency’s second female director, was a Secret Service agent for 25 years, becoming friendly with then-Vice President Joe Biden and his wife when she was on his security detail. She was head of security at PepsiCo before President Biden named her director. Ms. Cheatle has emphasized DEI in the Secret Service, committing to 30% of recruits being women by 2030. In 2023, she told CBS she wanted to “attract diverse candidates” and “make opportunities accessible for everyone, particularly women.”
Were the mission of the Secret Service to provide access and opportunities, she’d be on solid ground. But it’s not.
Unless 30% of the people the Secret Service protects will be women in 2030, the quota makes no sense. We all saw the female agent on stage with Mr. Trump. She was brave and competent, but she was too small, leaving an angle open to a possible second assailant. It’s not that she’s a woman; a man my size (5 feet, 9 inches tall, weighing 155 pounds) would also be a liability on Mr. Trump’s detail. Unless Ms. Cheatle is actively recruiting former WNBA players, she is inviting failure.
And indications are that rank-and-file agents think something is wrong with the Secret Service. In May, Bloomberg White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs tweeted that a petition was making the rounds inside the agency and had garnered at least 39 signatures. The document “flags concerns about ‘a number of recent Secret Service incidents indicative of inadequate training,’ a double standard in disciplinary actions, and a vulnerability ‘to potential insider threats’ that could pose a risk to U.S. national security.”
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi played down the petition in a statement, but not before adding some DEI-speak: “Our agency is comprised of talented professionals from various walks of life who are dedicated to safeguarding the continuity of the presidency and the U.S. financial system. Our strength comes from our diversity, in the knowledge, skills, experience, and perspective each employee brings.”
One of those incidents the petition refers to took place in April when a female agent had to be removed from Vice President Kamala Harris’ detail at Joint Base Andrews before Ms. Harris took off for Wisconsin. The agent became aggressive after what the Secret Service called a medical incident and physically attacked one or more of her colleagues. Ms. Harris wasn’t there at the time.
Infamously, the Secret Service was unable to identify who left a bag of cocaine in the West Wing of the White House last year. The White House is ground zero for Secret Service protection responsibilities. The cocaine could just as well have been anthrax.
As we saw on July 13, the world and, tragically, our politics are fraught with danger. The threat of foreign terror still hangs over the country nearly 23 years after 9/11. Violent anti-Israel riots have occurred in Lafayette Park, right across from the White House. And now a candidate for president has been shot at a campaign rally, and a spectator at the rally has been killed.
DEI will not help protect our officials and our institutions from any of that. But it can distract from that mission. Life and death are at stake, and unless the Secret Service can explain how hiring quotas can make one official one bit safer, DEI and its boosters must go.
• James Fitzpatrick is the director of the Center to Advance Security in America and a former official in the Trump administration.
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