The U.S. Secret Service said Wednesday it stood by its female agents and was appalled by some of the criticism they’ve received on conservative social media since Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
The Secret Service, in a statement to NBC News, said that the criticism from pundits and influencers was baseless. The agency also stood by its commitment to diversity in recruiting as helping, not hurting, the effectiveness of its protective teams.
The statement follows a multi-day campaign of derision by some conservatives who accused Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director, of being unqualified and who said that female agents assigned to Trump hadn’t been physically capable of protecting him. Some critics said the Secret Service should return to being all-male, which it hasn’t been since 1970.
Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service’s chief of communication, said in the statement: “We stand united against any attempt to discredit our personnel and their invaluable contributions to our mission and are appalled by the disparaging and disgusting comments against any of our personnel.”
“As an elite law enforcement agency, all of our agents and officers are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions,” he said.
“It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce,” he added.
Trump was injured in his ear at Saturday’s chaotic rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. An attendee was killed trying to protect his family, and another two were seriously injured.
The failure of the Secret Service to stop the gunman before he was in a position to shoot has come under intense scrutiny, with lawmakers demanding answers and an independent review panel investigating the circumstances. Attendees have said they pointed out the would-be assassin to law enforcement and took video of him for at least two minutes before Trump was struck, according to an NBC News review of video clips.
But the criticism of the female agents has been different. At least three female agents were among those protecting Trump in the moments after the shooting, according to videos, and in the days since, their actions have become popular targets of criticism and jokes among conservatives, with several posts on X receiving more than 10 million views.
The criticisms follow a pattern from other recent news events where conservative pundits and lawmakers, without evidence, cite “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programs as a contributing cause in disasters as disparate as the Boeing-made airplane problems or the Baltimore bridge collapse.
It’s not clear what the exact roles were for the individual female agents who are appearing in memes and photos. Some photos and videos show female agents leaping toward Trump and fully covering the front of his body, while some conservatives online have picked out other photos of female agents at the scene that they argue show incompetence or inaction.
Anti-DEI commentators have tried to create the impression that female agents were not only too short but somehow less prepared and responsive than their male counterparts. Evoking traditional gender roles, some mocked the women as belonging in the kitchen.
One meme with 10 million views on X used two contrasting photos to speculate that diversity efforts in the Secret Service had led to the demotion of muscular men with large sniper rifles in favor of female agents with less powerful handguns. Both photos appeared to show presidential security staff: one of a male sniper photographed by Reuters near the White House in 2020, and one of a female agent Saturday.
Another conservative commentator used a photo of what appears to be the same female agent during or immediately after the shooting as evidence for “why women should not be allowed to do Presidential protection details.” The photo shows the agent crouching near — but not part of — a huddle of other agents covering Trump’s body. That post had more than 11 million views.
Kenneth Valentine, a retired Secret Service agent and supervisor, said the photo was not evidence by itself that the female agent was in the wrong position.
“There are a lot of reasons why she might not be on top of that pile,” he said in an interview. He said that she might have been approaching from farther away or might have been in the process of switching positions.
Valentine, who served under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said the criticism of women in the Secret Service was generally misplaced.
“There are some unbelievable female agents,” he said. “They are very welcome, they are needed, and I can’t imagine my tenure in the Secret Service without that kind of diversity.”
The Secret Service is led by Cheatle, its second female director, and women make up 24% of its total workforce, of which presidential details are one part.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia on Tuesday called Cheatle a “DEI hire” and said she should resign. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee called Cheatle a “DEI initiative person” in an appearance on Fox News. Greene’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Burchett’s office said the congressman believes the Biden administration has hired for diversity at the expense of merit.
Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesperson, said DEI was about finding talented people.
“Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion ensures that we attract the best talent, fostering a robust and effective team that reflects the society we serve,” he said in the statement.
On its website, the Secret Service lauds diversity as “critical to our success.” Many of the posts criticizing the agency conflated DEI programs with race- or gender-based hiring quotas, which are unlawful.
Several groups that support women in law enforcement, including Women in Federal Law Enforcement and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, condemned the criticism and reiterated that their collective efforts have been to make sure that “the best possible candidates have access to the job they’re best suited for.”
“We must reject all bad-faith efforts that seek to score political points at the expense of our safety,” group leaders wrote in a group statement Tuesday. “These attacks are deeply disingenuous distractions from what matters most in the aftermath of fatal tragedies — in this case, mourning the senseless loss of life while investigating the actual factors that contributed to this tragedy and understanding how we can prevent such heinous acts in the future.”
One of the first criticisms after the shooting came from Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator who received a pardon from Trump in 2018 after pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions.
D’Souza, who has previously pushed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, shared a video of several agents moving Trump into his SUV next to a crowd of supporters after the shooting. He alleged that the female agents “have no clue what to do, or what they are doing” and he added: “This is DEI!” His post received 2.9 million views as of Wednesday. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Valentine, the retired agent, said he thought that some agents in the video appeared to have more control over their adrenaline than others, but he disputed the idea that agents’ performance always fell along gender lines.
“As a team, they had a fantastic reaction. It was super fast,” he said. “If there was one person on the team who didn’t operate on the right level, I’m going to be reluctant to criticize that.”
He said that one female agent who had difficulty reholstering her handgun may be “memed forever because of her reaction,” but he added: “The fact of the matter is she was standing fully erect in front of that vehicle, exactly where she needed to be.”
But posts criticizing the female agents still spread widely. The account Libs of TikTok received more than 10 million views on a post criticizing the female agents and saying “DEI got someone killed.”
Chaya Raichik, who runs the account, declined to comment further and, in an email she posted on X, said that a reporter was “mentally challenged” for asking.
The pro-Republican account @grandoldmemes altered a photo of a female Secret Service agent to make her appear as if she’s washing dishes instead of protecting Trump. It received 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours after it was posted Sunday. And it received another 600,000 views when it was reshared by the influential conservative account @catturd2.
Neither @grandoldmemes nor @catturd2 responded to requests for comment.
The arguments weren’t only on X. On Instagram, a similar post received more than 1,000 likes arguing that female Secret Service agents would be better off “in the kitchen” making sandwiches. And on YouTube, a video from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia called out the “fumbling fumbelinas” protecting Trump. Neither of those outlets responded to requests for comment Tuesday.
The argument spread widely. By late Monday, a wave of conservative pundits on social media had weighed in against diversity in the Secret Service including Mike Cernovich, Christopher Rufo, Ian Miles Cheong, Matt Walsh, Jake Shields, Candace Owens, Benny Johnson and the account @EndWokeness.
Owens stood by her criticism in a statement sent through a spokesperson: “Women have literally no role in the physical protection of men. It’s that simple. It’s basic biology.”
Rufo elaborated in a column he published Monday, saying the female agents lacked the “poise, confidence, and strength” of their male colleagues.
He wrote that while it’s “too early to know” whether DEI caused the lapse in security, “the assassination attempt reminds us of the stakes: split-second reactions, physical courage, and calm under pressure are all essential to the work of protecting the president.”
The others did not respond to requests for comment.
Tesla CEO and billionaire X owner Elon Musk added fuel to the idea that Trump’s security detail was physically inadequate. Musk, who endorsed Trump immediately after the shooting, posted Monday on X that bodyguards could be men or women but that they should be “large enough to do the job.” He cited the fictional warrior Brienne of Tarth, made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.” Many of the replies to Musk called for banning women entirely. X did not respond to a request for comment from Musk.
Valentine, the retired Secret Service agent, said there’s a legitimate question of whether agents should need to meet a height requirement — for example, perhaps they should be as tall as the person they’re protecting. But, he said, height is not always important because the first priority during a threat is generally to get the person on the ground rather than protect them standing up.
“I don’t think it should be along gender lines,” he said.
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