As conspiracies and threats of violence flooded online spaces in the hours after former president Donald Trump was shot during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, one narrative emerged from the right: Women and DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, are to blame.
The sexist claims are based on deceptively edited videos and images being shared online by right-wing pundits, influencers, and trolls that have critiqued a number of female Secret Service agents who were part of Trump’s close protection detail on Saturday.
The most common complaints against the agents include the fact that they were, according to posters online, too small, overweight, and in one case, incapable of handling their guns.
“This female agent couldn’t even holster her gun today during the attempted assassination of Trump. DEI hire?” wrote far-right troll Chaya Raichik, who runs the hugely popular Libs of TikTok account, in a post on X about a video that seemed to show a female agent struggle with her holster in the middle of the chaos. In a follow-up post on the same topic, which has been viewed 7.2 million times, Raichik wrote: “DEI got someone kiIIed.”
Right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson wrote on X that the situation was an “absolute humiliation for this gaggle of female Secret Service Agents,” and that “DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe.” This single post has been viewed more than 8 million times.
Hundreds of posts on X make similar claims, and dozens of them have more than 1 million views, according to a review conducted by WIRED and researchers at Advance Democracy, a nonprofit organization that conducts public interest research. Diversity has become a hot button issue for Republicans in recent months, with pundits labeling everything from the Baltimore Bridge collapse to Boeing’s raft of safety crises a DEI issue. Most recently, the right has suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris’ success is due to the fact that she was a “DEI hire.”
Many posts on X also included a video clip from an interview that Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle gave to CBS earlier this year, where she discussed increasing the number of female agents in the service to 30 percent as part of a diversity initiative.
This interview, and Cheatle’s gender, have become a major talking point both online and in the right-wing media ecosystem.
On Fox News, Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee directly blamed Cheatle for the shooting, calling her a “DEI initiative person.”
“This DEI agenda and the destruction of meritocracy is affecting the competence levels of these agencies,” Bill Barr, a former attorney general during the Trump administration, also told Jesse Watters on Fox.
Representative Cory Mills of Florida, who is a former US Army sniper, told Fox: “When you primarily go after DEI, you get D-I-E.”
Right-wing online media and conspiracy outlets like the Washington Times and the Gateway Pundit ran articles blasting the female agents involved. “Ponytail Brigade: Utter Humiliation For Gaggle of Female Secret Service Agents After Trump Assassination Attempt,” one headline on the Gateway Pundit website read.
