Last Saturday, a bullet reportedly ripped through former President Donald Trump’s ear while he was speaking at a campaign rally, prompting concerns about the Secret Service detail protecting him.
However, rhetoric online that lays blame at the Secret Service’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies is misplaced, according to former and current members of the agency. In particular, conservative commenters online have picked at the female agents in Trump’s detail.
For example, controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle a “DEI hire” in a Tuesday X post and said she should resign. Other conservatives also called for Cheatle to leave her post.
“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,” said Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service’s chief of communication, in a statement cited by NBC News.
“The Secret Service, in a statement to NBC News, said that the criticism from pundits and influencers was baseless,” the outlet reported. “The agency also stood by its commitment to diversity in recruiting as helping, not hurting, the effectiveness of its protective teams.”
Following the incident Saturday, reports have come out that 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was spotted around a half an hour before shots rang out and then again by bystanders around two minutes before the shooting. In addition to injuring Trump, he injured two other bystanders and killed 50-year-old former fire chief Corey Comperatore.
At least three women were among the agents who gathered around the former president to protect him during the shooting in Butler, Pa. Overall, women make up around 24% of the agency workforce.
“Secret Service personnel on the ground moved quickly during the incident, with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump,” said Cheatle in a statement.
According to the Daily Beast, Crooks’ parents called police with concerns about their son – who told his father he was going out to practice shooting – hours before the incident occurred. A Thursday report from CNN also referenced “19 lost minutes” when law enforcement didn’t know where Crooks was.
While the Secret Service stood by its female agents in the wake of the shooting, some posts targeting them still went viral on social media. NBC cited one meme with 10 million views on X used. It showed 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.”
Kenneth Valentine, a retired Secret Service agent and supervisor who served under the administrations of President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush, said criticism of women in the Secret Service is misplaced, per NBC News.
“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.”
According to the Pew Research Center, women made up 47% of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2023, up from 30% in 1950. Though women’s participation in the workforce has increased for decades, growth in this area has recently stagnated and the 47% figure is likely to remain the same through 2032.
When looking at the college-educated workforce in the U.S., women actually outnumber men. However, there is still a gender pay gap – women typically earned 82 cents on the dollar compared to men as of 2022.
“When asked about the factors that may play a role in the gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults point to employers treating women differently as a major reason, an October 2022 survey shows,” said Pew.
“The return of overt misogyny is visible both in politics and in popular culture,” said linguist Deborah Cameron, the author of “Language, Sexism and Misogyny” as quoted by Taylor & Francis.
An announcement for her book said that: “Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, the rise of the ‘tradwife’ and the ‘manosphere’ are all referenced in the book along with female public figures who have faced sexism such as [Vice President] Kamala Harris and Greta Thunberg.”
NBC said the recent 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.”
The outlet called the Trump rally comments a “multiday campaign of derision” that included claims that Cheatle is unqualified for position and that the female agents weren’t physically capable of protecting Trump. Since 1970, the Secret Service has included both male and female agents.
Guglielmi said the service “stands untied” against attempts to discredit its personnel, that it is “appalled by the disparaging and disgusting comments against any of our personnel,” and that all agents are highly trained and capable of participating in Secret Service missions. On X, he has been working to quell what he calls “untrue assertions” about what happened Saturday.