Mayorkas hits back at attacks on female Secret Service agents after Trump shooting

Washington DC – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded Saturday to misogynistic attacks on women. Secret Service agents who threw themselves into the line of fire to protect themselves Donald Trump of a potential hitman.

“These allegations are baseless and insulting,” Mayorkas said in a statement after some on the political right accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices that they said nearly led to the former president’s death.

Mayorkas praised the “highly qualified and trained” women who serve in law enforcement across the country for “putting their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others.”

“They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect,” he wrote.

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The Department of Homeland Security will “continue to recruit, retain and promote women in our law enforcement ranks with great pride,” he continued.

It’s been a week since a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing one bystander, wounding two others and leaving the Republican bleeding but alive.

Several women were seen among the Secret Service agents rushing to shield Trump with their bodies as gunshots rang out.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second female director of the federal agency charged with protecting current, former and future presidents — now face an intense investigation into the near-catastrophic attack.

“There should be no women in the Secret Service. They should be the best of the best, and none of the best of the best in this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in a typical far-right post.

Many of the attacks cited DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — hiring practices that some Republicans criticize as discriminatory against white people, particularly white men, in a country long known for its history of slavery, segregation and racist laws and policies.

“The results of DEI. DEI cost someone their life,” reads a post on the popular Libs of TikTok account.

The Secret Service has defended itself against such allegations in the past. A few weeks before the assassination attempt, a spokesman told media that agents “are held to the highest professional standards… the service has never lowered those standards.”

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Cheatle, who has so far ignored calls to resign, is due to appear before Congress on July 22 for a hearing on the attempted assassination.

The Secret Service has also agreed to an independent investigation ordered by President Joe Biden.

Not everyone on the right supported the criticism.

“I saw two women — one of them with a gun in her hand and the other with her body wrapped around him,” Trump’s top adviser Chris LaCivita told CNN reporter Kate Sullivan, writing in a post on X.

Sullivan said he went on to say, “I know this — a swarm of Secret Service agents put their lives on the line and put their bodies between President Trump and the bullets, and anyone who said otherwise about those people on stage is an idiot.”