It’s been about two weeks since an assassin shot former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, so naturally the media is concerned that someone might shoot Vice President Kamala Harris simply because she is a woman and black.
Politico published an interview with a former intelligence officer who commented on the assassinations of American politicians. The author of the article, Ankush Khardori, discussed how the Secret Service would have to respond to various threats if Harris becomes the candidate.
….[T]The security risks for Harris are actually greater simply because of who she is: a woman and a person of color – and the agency almost certainly takes that into account.
That’s according to Jeff James, who worked for the Secret Service for 22 years and resigned in 2018 after rising to the rank of deputy special agent. Over the course of his career with the agency, James was a member of President George W. Bush’s security staff and from time to time helped protect Trump during his time in office. James is now president of Capitol Security Consultants, a company that provides risk assessment and security training.
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James also spoke about the difficulties of assigning blame for the attempted assassination of Trump, given what we currently know – and don’t know. He is not convinced that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should have resigned despite growing bipartisan pressure to do so, even as he refused to downplay the incident.
“We were almost in a situation where we mentioned Butler, Pennsylvania, in the same breath as Dallas and Ford’s Theater,” he said, “so someone has to be held accountable.”
James said the Secret Service will support the Vice President’s security team with members of the Candidate Nominee Operation Section (CNOS) as she travels around the country on her campaign tour.
The reporter asked James how “concerned” he would be about threats against Harris “because she is a woman and a person of color.” The former agent responded:
I can tell you that throughout my career I have seen people hate candidates for a variety of reasons.
They hated Mitt Romney because he was a Mormon. They hated Hillary Clinton because she was a woman. They hated the second George Bush because he was a privileged son and that gave him an unfair advantage. They hated Barack Obama because he was African-American.
But since Kamala Harris is both a woman and a person of color, I am sure the Secret Service is prepared for the increased threat against her.
I think you’d be surprised how many people in 2024 still have very narrow-minded thinking that the president should be a white Christian man and anything else is unacceptable. I don’t have access to the intelligence around Vice President Harris, but if my experience is any indicator, concerns are sure to grow.
The interviewer asked James about the recent resignation of former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and wanted to know if it was “really justified.”
James said he “would have preferred to see the results of the FBI investigation before any heads were put on the chopping block,” pointing out that “the Secret Service assigned local police to the roof. And the local police left the post.”
I would have preferred to see the report, and if we had found out that this is systemic and that the i’s are not being dotted and the t’s are not being crossed [in the agency]then maybe she deserves to be fired. But if we find out that it was the fault of someone outside the agency and the agency had a contingency plan in place to prevent this from happening and it just wasn’t followed, then I think we have a different story.
However, there are reports that contradict the Secret Service’s apparent attempt to shift blame to local police forces. Key findings from the investigation into the shooting revealed that the Secret Service did not attend a key security briefing held by Butler County Emergency Services for local SWAT and sniper teams. Communication between local police forces and the agency was fragmented, and direct radio contact was sporadic. According to the local police department, the Secret Service had not originally planned to apply snipers at the rally.
So the crux of the matter is that Harris is at an increased risk of being murdered because racism and sexism are rampant in America. Yet the most recent political violence we know of has been directed against white male Republicans.
You may remember in 2017 when a crazed gunman targeted Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice. The shooter was motivated by left-wing ideology and was a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
Rand Paul describes to MSNBC what he saw during the shooting of congressmen https://t.co/GEKe3RFD6y pic.twitter.com/Yf0gUi5LEW
— Axios (@axios) 14 June 2017
Even then, the media tried to downplay the shooting. CBS news anchor Scott Pelley suggested that the mass shooting that killed Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was “self-inflicted.”
The reality is that Harris, as a public figure, is just as vulnerable as any other politician. It’s even possible that there are people who want to kill Harris because of her race and gender. But the idea that she is somehow more vulnerable to assassination is absolutely ridiculous given everything that has happened in recent years. Also, it’s worth remembering that we had a black president for eight years without (as far as we know) an assassination attempt.
This interview seems like another attempt to push the narrative that racism and sexism are a grave threat to national security. Essentially, they’re using Trump’s shooting to push that narrative, showing that these people won’t stoop any lower than they would to further their own agenda.
