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, a 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 that were shared online by right-wing pundits, influencers and trolls who have criticized several female Secret Service agents who were part of Trump’s personal protection team on Saturday.
Common complaints against the officers include the fact that, according to online posters, they were too small, overweight and, in one case, unable to handle their weapons.
“This officer couldn’t even holster her gun today during the attempted assassination of Trump. Did the DEI hire?” wrote far-right troll Chaya Raichik, who runs the popular Libs of TikTok account, in an X-rated post about a video that appeared to show a female officer struggling with her holster amid the chaos. In a subsequent post on the same topic, which has been viewed 7.2 million times, Raichik wrote: “DEI got someone killed.”
Right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson wrote on X that the situation was an “absolute humiliation for this group of female Secret Service agents” and that “the DEI Secret Service makes presidents LESS safe.” This single post has been viewed more than 8 million times.
According to a review by WIRED and researchers at Advance Democracy, a nonprofit that conducts public interest research, hundreds of posts on X make similar claims, with dozens of them having more than a million views. Diversity has become a contentious issue for Republicans in recent months, with pundits labeling everything from the Baltimore bridge collapse to Boeing’s spate of safety issues as a DEI issue. More recently, the right has suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris’s success is due to the fact that she was a “DEI hire.”
Many posts on X also included a video clip of an interview that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle gave to CBS earlier this year, where she talked about 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 topic of conversation both online and in the right-wing media ecosystem.
On Fox News, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee placed direct blame for the shooting on Cheatle, calling her a “DEI person.”
“This DEI agenda and the destruction of meritocracy is affecting the competency levels of these agencies,” Bill Barr, former attorney general during the Trump administration, also told Jesse Watters on Fox.
Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, who is a former U.S. Army sniper, told Fox: “When you go after DEI primarily, you get DIE.”
Right-wing online media outlets and conspiracy publications such as the Washington Times and Gateway Pundit published articles criticizing the female agents involved. “Ponytail Brigade: Utter Humiliation for Group of Female Secret Service Agents After Trump Assassination Attempt,” read a headline on the Gateway Pundit website.