The Secret Service can’t save the US – too many there want to harm its politicians

It’s only September, and Donald Trump has already survived the second assassination attempt of his current presidential campaign. No one is under the impression that it will be the last. The Secret Service has taken the extraordinary step of asking Trump to limit his golfing, or at least to allow them to gather more resources before he golfs again.

For an organisation that takes presidents into places like Kyiv and Baghdad, with a zero-fail mission attitude, this concession is hugely embarrassing. Presidential candidates, in functional democracies, can go play a round of golf without worrying if they’re going to be killed. The political violence rising in the United States has crossed a threshold, and it is unclear whether it can cross back.

The Secret Service makes for a natural scapegoat after a shooting. In the aftermath of the first attempt on Trump’s life, Kimberly Cheatle, head of the Secret Service, had to endure a grilling in Congress, and then resigned. Her career crucifixion was little more than a formality, of course. It is good and proper that whoever runs institutions with the prominence of the Secret Service has to take responsibility when it messes up. Heads must roll. But let’s not confuse Cheatle taking the blame with her being the problem.

Members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, found her convenient to condemn, but they weren’t trying to solve anything. They were not trying to establish a way for American politicians to feel safe from the reality of rising violence.

While I was researching The Next Civil War, published in 2022, I interviewed an anonymous Secret Service agent, and already, by then, they were facing an unmanageable surge of threats. The Secret Service investigates the