Author Douglas Murray condemned Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Thursday, accusing her of prioritizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives over the agency’s responsibility to protect former President Donald Trump.
“It just sickens me to see these things, the smugness, the stupid lack of questioning of the premises of this – what does it matter what the DEI quota is if you almost had a former president assassinated on live television in front of millions,” Murray told Sky News Australia host Danica De Giorgio.
Trump survived an attempted assassination by Thomas Matthew Crooks at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
Read: Online Account Linked To Trump Shooter Proven Fake, Sources Confirm
Not only did the 20-year-old gunman manage to get within rifle range of Trump, but law enforcement reportedly identified him as a suspicious person roughly an hour before he began firing. Cheatle said the “sloped” nature of the roof Crooks fired from made securing it difficult and potentially unsafe for the security agents.
Murray condemned officials who allowed DEI policies to undermine national security.
“Anyone who played these stupid, infantile games on these matters of life and death, and not just matters of life and death of one man, but of the Republic, really should be nowhere near power,” Murray said. “They should be as far away and as unemployed as it’s possible for anyone to be. They’re a danger.”
Murray laid into Cheatle for compromising high risk security situations for the sake of DEI hiring goals.
“People like her are an absolute liability,” Murray said. “There are some things that DEI really shouldn’t interfere in. One of them, I’d have thought, is the operation of the Secret Service. One of them is anything that absolutely pertains immediately to life and death matters.”
Read: Florida Sen. Rick Scott Demands Transparency On Attempted Assassination Of Former President Trump
Qualities essential for Secret Service agents, such as physical stature, should not be compromised for diversity goals, Murray said. Several females who were part of Trump’s security detail during the attempted assassination have faced backlash for appearing to struggle at shielding the president and holstering a weapon.
“There are basic things like, if you’re assigned to protect the president, shouldn’t you be at least as tall as the president?” Murray said.“If you’re going to shove your body in front of him, shouldn’t you be able to cover his torso and head? Don’t you just want very strong, beefy guys to do this?”
It’s no more important to have diversity in the Secret Service than it is to have diversity in the NBA, according to Murray. Diversity is unnecessary in “life and death matters around which the fates of whole nations rotate. We just need the best, whoever they are,” he said.
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Murray also criticized a Secret Service ad that highlighted its goal of having 30% female recruits by 2030.
“Why does she want 30% women? Why?,” Murray said. “You don’t need 30% women, you just need 100% the best. That’s all.”
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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