It has been about two weeks since a would-be assassin shot former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. So, naturally, the media is concerned about someone possibly taking a shot at Vice President Kamala Harris because she happens to be a woman and black.
Politico published an interview with a former Secret Service official who chimed in on assassinations against American politicians. The piece’s author, Ankush Khardori, discussed how the Secret Service might have to respond to various threats if Harris becomes the nominee.
….[T]he security risks facing Harris are indeed greater simply because of who she is, as a woman and person of color — and the agency is almost certainly taking that into account.
That’s according to Jeff James, who worked in the Secret Service for 22 years and resigned in 2018 after rising to the rank of assistant special agent in charge. Over the course of his career at the agency, James served on President George W. Bush’s protective detail and pitched in from time to time to protect Trump while he was in office. James is now the president of Capitol Security Consultants, a firm that provides risk assessment and security training.
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James also talked about the difficulties of allocating blame for the attempted assassination of Trump given what we currently know — and don’t know. He’s not convinced Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should have resigned despite the growing bipartisan pressure to do so, even as he refused to downplay the incident.
“We almost had a situation where we would be talking Butler, Pennsylvania, in the same breath as Dallas and Ford’s Theater,” he said, “so somebody needs to be held accountable.”
James indicated that the Secret Service would support the vice president’s security team with members of the Candidate Nominee Operation Section (CNOS) as she travels the country on her campaign.
The reporter asked James how “concerned” he would be about threats against Harris “because she’s a woman and a person of color.” The former agent responded:
I will tell you throughout my career, I saw people hate candidates for every reason.
They hated Mitt Romney because he was Mormon. They hated Hillary Clinton because she was a woman. They hated the second George Bush because he was the son of privilege, and it was an unfair advantage. They hated Barack Obama because he was African American.
But being that Kamala Harris is both a woman and a person of color, I’m sure the Secret Service is prepared for the heightened threat against her.
I think you’d be surprised how many people in 2024 still have a very closed mindset and think the president should be a white Christian male, and anything outside of that is unacceptable. I don’t have any access to the intelligence surrounding Vice President Harris, but if my experience is any indicator, it is going to be a heightened level of concern for sure.
The interviewer asked James about the recent resignation of former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, asking if it was “actually justified.”
James said he “would have rather seen the results of the FBI Investigation before any heads were put on the chopping block” and pointed out that “the Secret Service did assign local law enforcement to be on that roof. And local law enforcement walked off post.”
I would have rather seen the report, and if we found out that this is systemic and the I’s aren’t getting dotted and the T’s aren’t getting crossed [in the agency], then maybe she deserves to be fired. But if we find out it was the fault of someone outside the agency, and the agency put a contingency in place to stop that, and it just wasn’t fulfilled, then I think we have a different story.
However, there are accounts that contradict the Secret Service’s seeming attempt to pass blame to local law enforcement. Key findings from the investigation into the shooting revealed that the Secret Service did not attend a critical security briefing held by Butler County Emergency Services for local SWAT and sniper teams. Communications between local law enforcement and the agency were fragmented, with infrequent direct radio contact. Initially, the Secret Service had not planned to deploy snipers to the rally, according to the local police department.
So, the gist of this whole thing is that Harris is at a heightened threat of assassination attempts because America is rife with racism and sexism. Yet, the most recent acts of political violence that we know about happened against white male Republicans.
You might recall back in 2017 when a crazed gunman targeted Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice. The shooter was motivated by left-wing ideology and had been a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
Rand Paul describes to MSNBC what he saw at the shooting that targeted members of Congress https://t.co/GEKe3RFD6y pic.twitter.com/Yf0gUi5LEW
— Axios (@axios) June 14, 2017
Even back then, the media was trying to downplay the shooting. CBS News anchor Scott Pelley intimated that the mass shooting, which resulted in Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) being shot, was “self-inflicted.”
The reality is that Harris, as a public figure, is at risk just like other politicians. It is even possible that there could be some out there who would want to kill Harris because of her ethnicity and gender. But the notion that she is somehow more susceptible to an assassination attempt is absolutely ridiculous considering what has happened over recent years. Moreover, one might remember that we had a black president for eight years without any assassination attempts (that we know of).
This interview comes off as yet another way to push the narrative that racism and sexism are a dire threat to national security. They are essentially exploiting the shooting of Trump to push this narrative, showing that there is no low to which these people will stoop if it means advancing their agenda.
