A majority of Americans have doubts about the Secret Service’s ability to keep presidential candidates safe following the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life last month, a new poll finds. Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds.
Only about 3 in 10 Americans are extremely or very confident that the Secret Service can keep presidential candidates safe from violence before the election, according to the poll. The poll also found that about 7 in 10 Americans think the Secret Service bears at least moderate responsibility for the assassination attempt.
The law enforcement agency tasked with protecting presidents for more than a century is under intense scrutiny after a Shooter came within 150 meters of Trump and fired several bullets from an AR-style rifle. Trump was injured in one ear, but was millimeters away from being killed.
The survey was carried out after the resignation of director Kimberly Cheatle, who faced intense questioning in a live-streamed congressional hearing last week and in which he gave evasive answers. New interim director Ronald Rowe said earlier this week that he was “ashamed” after the July 13 attack in Butler, Pennsylvania, saying he considered it indefensible that the roof used by the shooter was not protected.
The poll found that Americans were more likely to say the political divide in the US bore “great” responsibility for the assassination attempt.
Half of American adults say this, while about 4 in 10 say the Secret Service has a high level of responsibility, and about 4 in 10 say the widespread availability of guns is largely to blame.
Democrats were much more likely to blame the availability of guns, while Republicans were more likely to blame the Secret Service.
Roger Berg, a 70-year-old farmer from Keota, Iowa, plans to vote for Trump, the Republican candidate, in November. But he expressed displeasure that Republicans were blaming President Joe Biden for issues over which he felt Biden had no control. Biden ended his re-election bid eight days after the shooting and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I wish the people who are making it all about politics would quit,” Berg said. “They attribute everything to Biden, and I don’t believe that.”
Democrats, however, are substantially more likely than independents or Republicans to say that gun availability bears a major responsibility. Six in 10 Democrats say this, compared with about a third of independents and 15% of Republicans.
Republican respondents were more likely than independents and Democrats to blame the Secret Service: About half of Republicans think the Secret Service has a major responsibility, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats and independents.
George Velasco, a 65-year-old Navy veteran from Tucson, Arizona, said he believed both the Secret Service and local authorities were to blame, along with poor communication and a lack of proper planning. The acting director of the Secret Service said earlier this week that it was regrettable that local authorities had not alerted his agency before the shooting that an armed subject had been spotted on a rooftop, while also acknowledging that the Secret Service assumed the State and local police had a presence.
“It was like the Secret Service expected those guys to know what they had to do,” Velasco said. “It was a very small area, a small town. How did they expect them to know how to prepare for something huge like that rally?”
The poll found that half of Americans believe local authorities in Pennsylvania bore at least moderate responsibility for the attempted murder, although only about 2 in 10 said they bore “a great deal” of responsibility.
The Secret Service was created as part of the Treasury Department to investigate the counterfeiting of U.S. currency during the Civil War. The agency began informally protecting presidents in 1894, according to its records. Congress requested Secret Service protection from U.S. presidents after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
Protection was extended to the president’s immediate family, presidents-elect, and vice presidents after a White House police officer was shot and killed while protecting President Harry S. Truman in 1950. It was later extended to former presidents in 1965. After the 1968 assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Congress authorized protections for major presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
About a third of Americans are extremely or very confident that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, will conduct a thorough and fair investigation of the assassination attempt, while about a third are somewhat confident and about 3 in every 10 are not very confident or not at all confident.
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The survey of 1,143 adults was conducted July 25-29, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
