Few Americans trust Secret Service after gunman nearly killed Trump, poll finds

Most Americans have doubts about the Secret Service’s ability to keep presidential candidates safe following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last month, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

According to the poll, only three in ten Americans have extreme or very high confidence that the Secret Service can protect presidential candidates from violence before the election. The poll also found that seven in ten Americans believe the Secret Service bears at least moderate responsibility for the assassination attempt.

The law enforcement agency charged with protecting presidents for more than a century is under intense scrutiny after a gunman came within 150 yards of Trump and fired several rounds from an AR-style rifle. Trump was hit in the ear but came within millimeters of being killed.

The survey was conducted following the resignation of Director Kimberly Cheatle, who faced intense questioning at a live-streamed congressional hearing last week and gave evasive answers. New acting Director Ronald Rowe said earlier this week that he was “embarrassed” after the July 13 attack in Butler, Pennsylvania, and said he found it indefensible that the roof used by the gunman was not secured.

The poll found that Americans were more likely to say that political division in the United States played a “large part” in the assassination attempt.

Half of American adults say the same, while about 4 in 10 say the Secret Service bears a high level of responsibility, and about 4 in 10 say the widespread availability of guns is largely responsible.

Democrats were much more likely to blame gun availability, 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 nominee, in November. But he expressed dissatisfaction with Republicans blaming President Joe Biden for issues he thought Biden had no control over. Biden ended his reelection campaign eight days after the shooting and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee.

“I wish people who do everything for politics would just give up,” Berg said. “They blame Biden and I don’t believe in that.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are substantially more likely than independents or Republicans to say gun availability is a major responsibility. Six-in-ten Democrats say so, compared with about a third of independents and 15 percent of Republicans.

Republican respondents were more likely than independents and Democrats to blame the Secret Service: About half of Republicans think the Secret Service bears a great deal of responsibility, compared with about 4 in 10 Democrats and independents.

George Velasco, a 65-year-old Navy veteran from Tucson, Arizona, said he thought both the Secret Service and local law enforcement 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 unfortunate that local law enforcement had not alerted his agency before the shooting that a gunman had been seen on a rooftop, though he also acknowledged that the Secret Service assumed state and local police were present.

“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 as big as that demonstration?”

The poll found that half of Americans think local law enforcement in Pennsylvania bore at least a moderate amount of responsibility for the attempted murder, although only about 2 in 10 said they bore “a lot” of responsibility.

The Secret Service was initially created as part of the Treasury Department to investigate counterfeiting of U.S. currency during the Civil War. The agency began informally protecting presidents in 1894, according to its records. Congress asked the Secret Service to protect 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 protection for major presidential and vice presidential candidates.

About a third of Americans have extreme or great confidence that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, will conduct a full and fair investigation of the assassination attempt, while about a third have some confidence and about 3 in 10 have no or very little confidence.

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The survey was conducted July 25-29, 2024, among 1,143 adults, 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.

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