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Donald Trump has sung the praises of an embattled female Secret Service agent, commending her bravery and claiming she “wanted to take a bullet” for him despite her small stature, during the attempt on his life earlier this month.
Female agents have faced a swathe of criticism and misogyny from prominent right-wing conservatives following the assassination attempt of the former president on July 13.
Thomas Crook, 20, fired a volley of eight rounds from a rooftop using an AR-15 rifle towards the Republican presidential nominee at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, striking Trump in the ear, killing one rallygoer and injuring two more.
Deflecting the attacks from online pundits, Trump praised the actions of one female agent who he has described as “brave” and “beautiful” during a rally in St Cloud, Minnesota this past weekend.
“There was great bravery displayed… Every one of them. There wasn’t one that was slow,” Trump said at the event on Saturday. “There was a woman to my right shielding me. A beautiful person. She was shielding me with everything she could.”
He continued: “She got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough. She was criticized and she was so brave.”
Trump said that one of the women who bundled him off the Pennsylvania stage “was shielding me with everything. She wanted to take a bullet”.
The former president’s comments come as criticism swirled online over the women working for the Secret Service – who make up almost 25 percent of the agency’s employees, a careers page on its website says.
Billionaire Elon Musk claimed that the bodyguards need to be “large enough” to defend Trump, who stands at 6ft 3in.
“There should not be any women in the Secret Service,” Daily Wire show host Matt Walsh also posted on X. “These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women.”
Meghan McCain, daughter of late Arizona senator John McCain, shared Walsh’s post. She said that the female agents surrounding Trump were “embarrassing and dangerous” as she poked fun at their height, adding that “one can’t holster a gun”.
Sexist remarks were also made about former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned from her post following fierce criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.
“I can’t imagine that a DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] from Pepsi would be a bad choice as head of the Secret Service,” Tennessee Republican representative Tim Burchett wrote on X.
“DEI results in D-I-E,” Florida Republican representative Cory Mills also told Fox News.
In response to the criticism almost a week after the attack, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said that all of its agents and officers are “highly trained and fully capable” of carrying out missions.
“It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce,” he told The Hill.
