It’s been more than a month since a 20-year-old nearly assassinated Donald Trump while he was speaking at a rally, live on national television. I used to say that the gunman had somehow managed to “evade” the Secret Service, but actually, he didn’t even do that. He was spotted by the Secret Service numerous times — including by Secret Service counter-snipers, who saw the gunman on top of a roof, with clear line of sight to Donald Trump, more than 20 minutes before he began shooting.
The shooter was also photographed walking around the rally openly carrying an AR-15. This is a picture that was just obtained by Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna:
Credit: @realannapaulina. X/Twitter.
Short of carrying a sign saying “I’m about to assassinate Donald Trump,” it’s not clear what the shooter could have done to attract more attention to himself. But the official line remains the same: supposedly the Secret Service didn’t perceive the shooter as a threat until after he started firing. At this point I’m kind of surprised they got the hint even then. I’m surprised they didn’t turn to each after the shots rang out and say, “Hey, that guy over there seems to be firing a rifle. What do you think he’s up to? Is he trying to communicate something? Is it morse code perhaps?”
But the Secret Service isn’t that oblivious yet, I guess. Anyway, supposedly the agency is deeply embarrassed by all of this, and they’re doing everything in their power to make sure it never happens again. The Trump security detail is supposedly on high alert, heads on swivels. All the protocols have been revised. Everyone’s on their best behavior.
So what does the Secret Service’s best behavior look like? At Trump’s rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, we got a pretty good idea. Watch:
A Secret Service agent abandoned her post during Donald Trump’s visit to North Carolina to breastfeed her baby, according to a report. NEWSMAX National Correspondent Alana Austin has more details.@alana_austin pic.twitter.com/8LiTs35vOi
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) August 15, 2024
So according to RealClearPolitics correspondent Susan Crabtree, this agent was discovered breastfeeding her child instead of doing her job and securing the site where Donald Trump was about to speak. This was just minutes before Trump’s motorcade arrived. She was in a room that was reserved for emergencies. And on top of that, the agent brought two of her family members to the secure area and allowed them to bypass the security checkpoint. The family members were escorted by an event staffer who also wasn’t cleared by the Secret Service to be in the secure area.
When I first heard this, I didn’t think it could possibly be an accurate report. This story would’ve been unthinkable even before the assassination attempt in Butler. But it’s even harder to believe afterwards. This agency is apparently so thoroughly corrupt and incompetent that they can’t even pull it together and pretend to be doing their jobs, even when there’s a massive and unprecedented amount of scrutiny on them.
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But it does appear to be an accurate story. The Secret Service just put out a statement that basically confirmed it:
While there was no impact to the North Carolina event, the specifics of this incident are being examined. Given this is a personnel matter, we are not in a position to comment further.
A good rule of thumb here is that whenever an organization won’t comment on an alleged incident, it means the incident happened. They would be able to comment if it didn’t happen. There are no confidentiality rules preventing anyone from saying that a thing didn’t happen if it didn’t happen. So in other words, yes, the agent left her post to breastfeed and allowed multiple people to bypass a security checkpoint at a Trump rally, a month after he was shot and nearly killed. They won’t deny it because it’s true. And no, you’re not allowed to know anything else. You’ll never know the identity of this agent, or whether she was fired or even disciplined. Even though the Secret Service works for the taxpayers, and even though they’re clearly terrible at their jobs, they don’t have to answer any of your questions.
In fact, they won’t even really express any concern about what happened. “There was no impact to the North Carolina event,” they say, as if that’s supposed to be remotely reassuring. They don’t add a line about how tremendously embarrassed they are about this story, and how they’re going to take steps to make sure that no more agents leave their posts to breastfeed their children while allowing family members to bypass security. They don’t even mention any of that. They might as well say, “Hey, this time our massive security lapse didn’t allow a 20-year-old to shoot Donald Trump in the head, so what’s the big deal? Geez you people will never be happy. Always nitpicking!”
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What that statement conveys is that Secret Service agents routinely violate policy, and the agency isn’t particularly ashamed about it. There’s been a lot of reporting to that effect as well in the past few weeks. For example, the Secret Service site agent in charge of the “security plan” for the Butler rally apparently still hasn’t been fired. In fact, the Secret Service director testified that she’s still actively involved in planning the security of various events. That’s despite reporting from Susan Crabtree indicating that this particular site agent — whose identity remains concealed — obviously doesn’t take her job seriously. She’s openly violated policy numerous times.
From RealClear Politics:
Over the last two weeks, the Secret Service inspections department, which investigates employee misconduct, is homing in on allegations against an agent on the Trump detail who played a key role during the Butler rally and is partially responsible for developing the security plan, which contained egregious mistakes that left an opening for shooter Thomas Crooks. …. The agent is now under the microscope not only for her role in devising the security plan for the rally. She’s also facing internal scrutiny for posting videos and photos from her protective assignments to social media.
One of those posts, apparently taken from inside Mar-a-Lago, read: “A sunset to be grateful for.” The message also included a heart and sunset emojis and the hashtags “#nofilter #southflorida #thankful #workmode …”
So instead of looking for assassins who might be trying to kill Donald Trump, she’s taking pictures to impress her followers on Instagram. Sure, she might have let an assassin sneak by her, but at least she got some great Instagram content. And that’s just one of several recent protocol violations by the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago. Crabtree also reports that there was an incident in which a member of Trump’s detail:
took cellphone photos of two members of the support staff sleeping in a command post while guarding Mar-a-Lago and circulated those to others on the detail.
There was also an incident in which a random guy off the street was able to sneak into the Miami Secret Service field office and post up for a few days:
Some agents working out in the gym violated office policy by propping open the door to help ventilate the room. A man in shorts and a t-shirt entered through that partially opened door, and no one noticed. The man … apparently found the bunk room, took a shower, and fell asleep in a bed overnight. … He accessed computers on an open internet line and downloaded and watched porn. … The next morning, [he] asked administration staff where he ‘could get a cup of coffee around here,’ and the employees responded by fulfilling his request for coffee without realizing he didn’t belong there, the sources said. He then ventured into a class on defensive tactics that a supervisor was teaching. The supervisor confronted him about his identity and apprehended him.
From these stories and many others like them, it’s clear that the Secret Service is apparently not going to fix anything. This is just too pervasive a problem to fix without completely re-working the entire agency. They can’t protect presidents. They can’t even protect their own field offices. They need a complete overhaul at a minimum.
Until that happens, the Secret Service will continue to be strengthened by diversity until a president is actually killed, at which point they’ll still probably blame it on a lack of diversity and commit to getting even more lactating women into the ranks.
That would obviously lead to disaster — and not just for the hapless VIP’s that these agents would be assigned to protect. It would also be a disaster for the women who are hired.
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No one seems to be pointing this out, but what happened in North Carolina underscores the absurdity of having women in positions like this. It’s not just that she was breastfeeding on the job. That’s outrageous, obvious, for a million reasons that probably don’t need to be explained. But I’ll go a step further: even if that agent had waited to breastfeed until she got home, it would still be not only ludicrous but morally insane for her to be in a position like this. She’s a mom of a very young child. Her job requires her to potentially throw herself in front of a bullet to protect whatever government official she’s assigned to. She has to be willing to die as a part of her job description. What happens to her baby then?
Functional societies do not ask, or even allow, mothers to stand on the front lines and take bullets for their country. That’s what men are for. Everyone, myself included, was very critical of that female agent who seemingly hid behind the pile of bodies after Trump was shot. It was a disgraceful sight. But it would be just as disgraceful, for different reasons, if a woman was in front of the pile. And until we can agree on that very basic point — which every civilization before us could agree on — then we don’t have a chance of fixing this country, much less the Secret Service.
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