Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e25 Episode Script
Secret Service
1
Welcome, welcome,
welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
French students took to
the streets to protest education cuts,
there was a disappointing U.S.
jobs report,
and former Pittsburgh Steelers
head coach Mike Tomlin
released an incredible 19-minute
YouTube video
showing off the Minecraft city
he spent over a decade building.
I started small, and of course,
over the course of 12 years, man,
you develop neighborhoods
and communities and so forth.
We'll start at the front of this very
first building that I built here in town.
And it was a boutique hotel
kind of on a bay.
Here's an executive spa
off to the left of the lobby,
with therapy rooms and so forth,
first and second floor.
And so, I just kind of wanted to have
a little spa area at the boutique hotel.
It's incredible!
It is just incredible.
It is wild to me that Mike Tomlin
was once the youngest head coach
to ever win the Super Bowl,
but that is no longer
his greatest accomplishment.
Because as we all now know,
that would be the executive spa area
in his Minecraft boutique hotel.
Tomlin apparently started playing
Minecraft "to spend time with his kids,"
but even as they got older
and moved on, he kept doing it.
His sons actually helped him
make the video tour, and I promise,
you can drop into it at literally any
point and find something magnificent.
I was always really conscious
of appropriate amenities.
You'll find, you know, an appropriate
number of public restrooms and stuff
throughout all my public facilities.
I'll give you a tour of
this aquarium at some point.
It is crazy.
You'll love it.
The crazy part is how much time it took
you to get that water situated, though.
That was a nightmare.
I used a lot of glowstone early on.
Not because I like the glowstone.
I really didn't.
But lighting was important.
Yeah, he's right!
Lighting is important.
And glowstones,
of course, emit a light level of 15,
the brightest
possible light level in the game.
You're probably thinking, "Well, John,
he could've gotten a 15 from lanterns,
sea lanterns, jack-o'-lanterns,
redstone lamps,
conduits, beacons,
shroomlights, or froglights.
But what's he supposed to do?
Use a shroomlight?
A shroomlight in the bar
area with the pool? Please.
Tomlin may not love the glowstone,
but unlike you, the man has taste.
This whole video is so
filled with joy, but honestly,
I think my favorite
part is the title "Episode 1."
Because fuck yes!
I cannot wait to see what
he talks about next episode,
which is frankly something no
one has ever said about this show.
Meanwhile, with the midterms
less than a month away,
polls for House Republicans look so grim
that a growing number of them
privately believe
they won't keep the majority.
It is no wonder some candidates
are now resorting to eye-catching ads
that take some big swings-perhaps none
more so than this one in North Carolina.
I'm Jennifer Balkcom.
I come from a long
line of tough mountain women.
Mom raised us on her own.
She taught us to be strong.
And when someone broke
into our house, she shot him.
You break into my house,
you're gonna get shot.
That is an interesting story
about your mom,
but I'm not sure what it has
to do with you as a candidate.
Say what you like about Liz Cheney,
at least she never ran on
"please vote for me,
my dad once shot a guy in the face."
Quick side note about Jennifer Balkcom:
she was actually a last-minute addition
to the ballot, as the Republican
incumbent, Chuck Edwards,
dropped out of the race after he
was formally censured by the House
following a months-long ethics
investigation into allegations
he sexually harassed two young
female staff members.
Some have since suggested
Edwards should also resign from Congress,
and when a reporter asked Balkcom
about that, her answer wasn't great.
Do you think he should resign
from his position,
or are you comfortable
with where things stand now?
I'm not sure.
Holy shit, that was a long pause!
Even those cows
behind her are probably like,
"I don't have time for this, and my
entire to-do list is chew grass and shit."
That pause was so long,
and I do not say this lightly,
her mom could have shot,
like, 20 intruders in that time.
And look, there'll clearly be more to
say about the midterms going forward,
but for now, we're actually gonna dive
straight in with our main story tonight,
which concerns the U.S. Secret Service.
It has long been the subject
of movies from "In the Line of Fire"
to "The Sentinel"
to "Olympus Has Fallen",
the trailer for which opens
with this truly incredible sequence.
Mustang, this is Bigtop.
Bringing out the full package.
Where'd that come from?
Get out of the car!
I'm sure she's fine.
That scene really follows a key
rule of screenwriting:
if you want to make
a man sympathetic
but you don't know how,
just kill his wife in a tragic accident.
Incidentally,
I believe that's the same strategy
the British royal family had in 1997.
But obviously, you don't just see
the Secret Service in movies,
you also hear about them
on the news.
And unfortunately,
when they're talked about on TV,
it's usually because there's
been a big mistake or a very close call.
So it's clearly not ideal that I'm about
to talk about them on TV right now.
But the reason for that is, there've been
a lot of close calls lately,
with none closer than what happened
in Butler, Pennsylvania two years ago.
The Butler, Pennsylvania shooting has
been difficult on many fronts.
We failed.
The Secret Service failed.
You know, the first and foremost is that
one person died inside a secured event.
Three other people, including a former
president, were wounded inside that event.
There's just no way you
can't use the word "failure"
when shots are fired into what is
supposed to be a secured venue.
Right, a rallygoer died
and Trump's ear got shot.
When the Secret Service
has a bad day,
those are the kinds
of consequences you can get.
It's why the agency has
a "zero-fail" mission for themselves,
with agents pointing out, "if you fail,
it can change the course of history",
a level of pressure
I truly cannot fathom.
I'm pretty confident the historical
legacy of this show
will be a few hundred thousand dollars
for food banks, a koala chlamydia ward,
and whatever the fuck is going on
with Russell Crowe's jockstrap right now.
Because, quick update,
after we auctioned the jockstrap
off at the end of last year
in aid of public media,
it was apparently put up
for auction again in August,
where I'm happy to tell you it sold
for $10,000.
And the reason I know that is
of course we fucking bought it back.
Of course we did!
I cannot wait to find out
where you're gonna go next.
The point is, agents
have a high-stakes job.
And that's what makes it so worrisome
that, by all accounts,
the Secret Service is heading
into what might be
one of its most challenging
periods yet.
For one thing, the agency says threats
against their protectees
are "off the charts" these days.
And things are about to
get even busier, as in 2028,
they'll be tasked with coordinating
protection
around the Summer Olympics
and Paralympics,
plus the annual UN General Assembly.
And that year will also see a presidential
election, fingers crossed,
which means eventual nominees
from both parties, their running mates,
and their spouses will receive
full-time Secret Service details too.
And if that wasn't enough, the agency also
expects a wave of departures before 2028,
since about a third of the workforce
will be retirement-eligible by then.
So it is no wonder
that some in the Secret Service
have privately referred
to 2028 as "armageddon."
And to be fair, it has tried to step up
recruiting efforts,
most notably with an ad that played
during last year's Super Bowl,
for which they hired none other
than Michael Bay,
and which opens with a bold
set of footage choices.
America was founded
on an idea of freedom.
America's always stepped
forward in time of need
throughout our short
but powerful history.
Ask not what your country
can do for you.
Ask what you can do
for your country.
Tear down this wall.
We've been there for all of it.
A second plane hit the tower.
What the fuck are you doing?
First, it is a little weird to try to
recruit people into the Secret Service
by highlighting three of
our most famously shot-at presidents.
Meanwhile,
the rest of that footage focuses
either on stuff that had nothing
to do with the agency, or that thing.
Though, I should say, as the ad goes on,
we do eventually get to the point.
Our heroes are humble.
They have an inner pride
to keep this idea alive.
Protectors are born.
They're not made.
America's Secret Service,
protecting this Super Bowl,
is asking a few more
to step forward.
Okay, I don't really
know what is weirder there,
the juxtaposition of humbleness
with Special Agent White Mr. T here,
or the claim that agents
"are born and not made,"
implying that you literally can't
train to be a Secret Service agent.
Though, I admit, that ad does make
them look pretty badass,
especially for an agency that,
as this image suggests,
has had some pretty close
calls recently.
That is not exactly a triumphant
moment for them, is it?
And it's a bit odd to choose
to self-promote using an image of yourself
at your lowest, even if it's a strategy
that I can frankly relate to.
So given all of that, tonight,
let's look at the Secret Service,
where it came from, why it's in
such a worrying state right now,
and what if anything
we can do to improve things.
And let's start with a little history.
Because the agency's origin story is,
to say the least, inauspicious.
It was Abraham Lincoln who created
the Secret Service 150 years ago.
And ironically, it was on
the very day he was assassinated.
Yeah, Lincoln was assassinated
just hours after
he signed the legislation
creating the Secret Service.
But in their defense, and this is the only
time they can use this, they were new.
Also, to be fair, at that point,
the agency wasn't actually tasked
with protecting the president.
Instead, they were a part
of the Treasury Department,
and had been established to crack
down on counterfeit money,
which was a big problem at the time,
given it's estimated
that about one-third of the paper money
in circulation was fake.
Although, fun fact, their work combating
counterfeiting
did eventually mean protecting Lincoln's
body, as years later,
they helped thwart a scheme hatched
by a counterfeiting ring that called
"for Lincoln's body to be stolen
from his tomb"
in order to ransom it back
to the government for,
among other things, $200,000.
Just a little fun fact for you there.
Like all fun facts, telling
it to anyone won't make them like you.
It certainly didn't make
me like the writer who insisted
on bringing it up
when discussing this piece.
But it is one of those things
that you can bring up at a party
as a way to remind people why
they shouldn't invite you to parties.
But incredibly,
it wasn't until the 20th century,
after two more presidents
had been assassinated,
that presidential protection was formally
added to the Secret Service's duties.
And they now do that
in all sorts of ways.
Some of them are obvious, like standing
beside a president when he greets a crowd.
And some are much less obvious,
like this.
There was a guy that broke into President
Reagan's house in Bel Air,
and my job for a year
and a half as his case agent was,
I would say, "President Bush
is coming into town,"
or, "Vice President Cheney's coming into
town on Tuesday. What are you doing?"
And he lived in a halfway house, and
he would say, "I'm not doing anything."
I'd say, "Let's go to a movie and
let's go eat dinner while he's here."
And so, that was
my job with another agent,
was we would go make him
happy while the president was in town,
to make sure we knew where
he was and keep tabs on him.
That is true.
Agents sometimes keep tabs on
potential threats by doing things
like taking them out somewhere
whenever the president is nearby.
And given just how much shit
I talk about our current president,
I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance
the Secret Service has a file on me,
so given that, let me just say,
I haven't seen "Oh, Mary!" yet
and I hear great things.
Apparently Bowen Yang is in it now.
I'm just saying,
if you want to keep tabs on me
the next time Trump's in New York,
I do love an aisle seat.
Now, these days,
the job of spotting threats
has clearly gotten more complex,
given how easy it is to make them online.
In fact, just watch as this agent explains
one way that they assess online threats.
Now, when I'm looking through his social
media after the initial threat,
we're looking for weapons or anything,
any comments that are nonsensical,
that's concerning.
So, this is definitely a red flag.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you're probably right.
What a keen eye you have!
Though, to be honest,
if being an agent includes needing to be
good at trawling through social
media fast to look for red flags,
it feels like they're overlooking
a huge hiring pool
of single women in their thirties.
Because believe me, Jessica could
have found that post in two seconds flat,
along with the names of all of
his sisters, exes, and preschool teachers.
"Oh, I'm sorry, you retweeted
Russell Brand in 2018? Goodbye."
Now, I should say,
even as the agency does all that,
it still has to deal with
its counterfeiting investigations.
It has an official
"dual mission of protection
and investigating financial crimes,"
which it does at 115 field offices
all over the country.
That is why you sometimes see stories
on the news
like this one from earlier
this year.
It takes less than two seconds
for this suspect
to install a skimming device
on a credit card terminal.
How are you doing, sir?
My name's Vince Porter,
I work for the Secret Service.
The Secret Service gave CBS News
exclusive access
as they search for skimmers
across Los Angeles.
They snap perfectly on
credit card terminals and ATMs,
collecting information to drain
your account with every swipe.
We got one.
Analyst Vince Porter
spotted this one right away.
Yeah, the Secret Service is also
tasked with catching card skimmers,
which is kind of incredible.
It's like being in a bad car accident
and getting rescued by Ryan Seacrest.
"Hold on, this is one of your jobs too?
You're taking a lot on."
But wait, that's still not all, they also
provide forensic and technical support
to the National Center
for Missing & Exploited Children,
and investigate things
like romance scams.
Some agents will insist
those investigations
are what keep their minds sharp,
and that they can also help establish
relationships with local law enforcement.
But that is still a lot to
be putting on their plate!
Especially given
that plate is already pretty full.
Now, obviously, the most well-known
job they have is their protective mission,
which involves
guarding not just the president,
but also the vice president,
former presidents and spouses,
visiting heads of foreign states
or governments,
distinguished foreign visitors,
major presidential and vice
presidential candidates, and more.
And being on protective duty is a much
more draining job than you may think.
Obviously, scanning a massive
crowd of people
while being willing to take a bullet
for someone is a big part of it,
but it also requires incredible amounts
of preparation known
as "advance work"
and punishingly long shifts,
all of which can take a real toll,
as this former agent explains.
At the time, I didn't understand
how stressful it was.
I would say during the time I was
in charge of President Clinton's detail,
I can't remember a night that I had
more than three hours of continuous sleep.
Everybody burns out.
No one maintains an edge constantly.
Yeah, that's not great, is it?
Three hours of sleep probably isn't enough
to effectively protect the president.
Especially given,
as any parent of a newborn will tell you,
it's barely enough to be
an operational person at all.
The most you have energy to
do at that point is just to Google,
"could I die from not enough sleep,"
and then maybe add, "please."
The point is, the toll on
your personal life can be intense.
Agents have talked about being away
from their family for weeks at a time,
missing holidays and birthdays,
with one even saying,
"Thankfully I'm not married, but if I was,
I'd probably be divorced by now."
Which is pretty alarming.
If the best you can say for your job is,
"Well, at least I'm not disappointing
and growing apart from my
nonexistent wife," that job sounds bad.
And it probably doesn't help matters
that lots of presidents have been,
not to put too fine a point on it,
weirdos and assholes.
Calvin Coolidge, for instance, apparently
had a bell he used to summon agents with,
which he'd repeatedly ring,
after which he "scampered quickly
away" to hide and watch their confusion.
And while this isn't the point,
just imagine how nice it would be
to have a president spry enough
to be able to scamper right now.
But that's just the beginning.
JFK's agents had the uncomfortable
task of standing guard
while he was pretty obviously
cheating on his wife.
The same went
for agents on Bill Clinton's detail.
Meanwhile, legend has it that LBJ
once had an agent shield him
while he was peeing outside,
during which that agent apparently felt
"something warm
and wet on his trousers."
And when he said,
"Mr. President, you're pissing on my leg,"
LBJ apparently replied, "Ah know ah am.
That's mah prerogative."
As for Trump, he's apparently complained,
"I want these fat guys off my detail,"
adding, "How are they gonna
protect me and my family
if they can't run down the street?"
Which is pretty insulting, isn't it?
I mean, not quite as insulting as the fact
he riled up a crowd of his supporters
to swarm his vice president
on January 6th,
something that apparently made members
of Pence's detail fear for their lives,
but still pretty bad!
And while it is obviously
not as dangerous as that,
during the Biden years,
agents also had to deal with this shit.
Commander is in the doghouse again!
The Bidens' two-year-old
German shepherd has bitten
another Secret Service agent,
this time a woman.
This is the 11th time in two years
the dog has sunk his teeth into someone.
"The officer was treated by medical
personnel on the White House complex,"
says a Secret Service spokesman.
A former Secret Service agent
calls Commander a "significant hazard.
It's a serious issue."
Yeah, it really was!
Commander actually bit
Secret Service agents at least 24 times.
Which is obviously terrible, although
do spare a thought for Commander,
who probably felt bad enough already,
then had to watch that clip thinking,
"Don't use that one picture of me.
Just don't use that one picture.
Please don't use that one,
aw, fuck!
Come on! That's taken out of context!
I was saying hi to a friend!"
So clearly, agents have to put
up with an enormous amount of shit,
while doing an utterly exhausting job,
where incidentally,
the starting salary
is just over $49,000 a year.
And while you can bring
that up through things like locality pay
and other benefits,
those can only go so far,
since they're also
subject to a federal salary cap.
So once you hit that annual cap,
even if it is only September,
you can't then get paid any more,
meaning that after a certain point,
your overtime hours are worked for free.
And while a few years back,
Congress stepped in
and passed legislation that provides
overtime for staffers
who work in protection,
that measure notably expires in 2028,
a fact conveniently left out
of that Super Bowl recruitment ad.
And the thing is,
that is just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes
to the agency's budget issues.
Because for as high as the stakes
of their job are,
they've consistently been
stretched worryingly thin
in terms of manpower and resources.
In fact, there's even a motto
many agents have been known to use,
"We do more with less," an attitude
that can manifest in a number of ways.
For instance, years ago,
the agency requested funding
to build a detailed replica
of the White House
to help train officers and agents
to protect the real thing.
Which makes sense.
But it has never been built.
And if you're wondering how
they've sometimes had to train instead,
just watch this.
So, this bike rack is how you do
your White House fence training?
Yeah, this bike rack
is a representation
of what we have
as the north fence line downtown.
And the White House?
The White House is the trees
you see back there.
Sergeant Darrione Nall says his officers
have to use their imagination,
running through trees as if they were
rooms in the White House.
How much of a disadvantage
is that from a training perspective?
It can be a huge disadvantage.
Yeah, they have to use their imagination.
And picturing
something crucial for your job
clearly isn't what
your imagination is for.
It should be for
whimsical flights of fantasy,
like picturing yourself on a beach,
or floating in a tranquil pool,
or getting your skin peeled like
an orange slowly from top to bottom,
or taking a romantic cruise,
or soaring among the stars,
or the unpeeling continuing down
your shoulders now, it doesn't hurt,
you're not hurting an orange when you do
it, the orange likes it, it feels fine.
Or falling softly onto a cushy cloud,
or the feeling of the peel going down
the small of your back,
a chill as you wonder what
sensations your new skin will bring.
Or nice, hot soup on a snowy day.
Or the peel's reached your thighs now,
and I lied before,
it does hurt a little,
that's actually part of it.
Every orange would scream if it could.
And then you step
out of your peel and you're new,
but you're also the you that's
been inside you this whole time.
And now they'll see, now they'll all see,
the real you won't be denied,
can't be denied!
Or a nice walk.
You know, just regular things
that we all use our imagination for.
Anyway, it has now gotten to the point
where the agency's even sent agents
to train at an 80% scale mock
White House in Atlanta.
And not just any
mock White House, by the way.
One built as a TV set by Tyler Perry
for this soapy drama
that ran for seven seasons.
Here's just a taste.
Who the hell do you think you are?
I'm the bitch that put you
in this damn seat.
- You are not leaving.
- Watch me.
Tase her.
I wish you would.
Your mother is here, ma'am.
We made that hillbilly
the president.
If I have to come back,
one of you will die.
From one soap actor to another, respect.
So, the agency
is often stretched extremely thin,
and that's happened even
as their duties have increased.
During the last presidential election,
they've reported having to protect
as many as 43 individuals
around the clock.
And now Trump's in office again,
they have been extremely busy,
as the Trumps
tend to take a lot of family trips.
For context, where Obama's family
took around 133 protected trips per year,
during Trump's first term alone,
his family took an average of over 1,600.
And if there's any member of the Trump
family watching this right now
who's learning for the first time
that the rest of your family's been
taking over 1,600 trips without you,
then I'm truly sorry you had to
find out this way, whoever you are, Eric.
And it's not just the Trumps,
by the way.
Agents have also grumbled about
the demands JD Vance's family put on them,
especially as they apparently
frequently change plans without warning,
forcing agents to cancel
their days off, drop other plans,
and often race to
the location where they are needed,
while also having to come
up with security plans in a hurry.
In fact, frustration over accommodating
Vance's schedule is so common,
agents on his detail apparently even
made custom coins and stickers to mock it.
They read "Bobcat OTR Survivors Club."
"Bobcat" because that's Vance's security
codename, "OTR" because "off the record"
is the term for hasty, unplanned trips,
and coins and stickers
because I'm guessing they're not allowed
to get way with T-shirts that say,
"Fuck this guy."
The point here is, the agency
is clearly under significant strain.
But even that
doesn't completely account
for the number of inexplicable
fuckups that there have been,
which have happened
at an accelerating rate
ever since the start
of the Obama presidency.
Now, that was a moment when, admittedly,
their job did become much more difficult,
given the agency reportedly
experienced a 400% increase
in the number of
threats against the president.
And if you do not know why violent
threats went up from this guy to this guy,
I've got some interesting
news for you: you are a liar.
And with threats on the rise, you'd think
the agency would've been on high alert,
which is what makes it so weird
that they had a number of
security breaches and scandals,
some of which you might
not even remember, like this one.
Washington, D.C.,
September 19th, 2014.
At 7:20 PM, 42-year-old
Omar J. Gonzalez
scales the iron perimeter fence
of the White House
and races 70 yards across the lawn
through the north portico doors.
Gonzalez not only scaled
the outside fence,
but he got inside the White House,
which was not locked.
Yeah, a guy ran straight in,
and with a knife, by the way.
That is shocking for a bunch of reasons,
including that the White House
front door wasn't locked.
It's like finding out
the nuclear codes are "password1234."
I guess I just assumed
it'd be more secure than that.
But of all the close calls
during the Obama administration,
the scariest might've been
what happened in 2011,
when a man aimed a high-powered
rifle at the White House
and fired at least eight shots.
He apparently harbored paranoid beliefs,
including that Obama was the Antichrist,
and that he himself
was the modern-day Jesus.
And to be fair, when you see
a picture of him, you can kind of see it.
Anyway,
those bullets hit the White House,
with several hitting
the part of the building
where the president and his family live.
But the Secret Service initially
wrote the incident off as gang members
who engaged in a gunfight
near the White House's front lawn.
In fact, it took them four days
to realize that shots
had hit the White House residence,
a discovery that only came about
because a housekeeper noticed the broken
glass and a chunk of cement on the floor.
But perhaps the stupidest incident
in the Obama years
had nothing to do
with a lack of resources,
and much more to do with the agency having
some entrenched cultural problems.
It happened in Cartagena, and the quickest
explanation is that
ahead of Obama's visit to Colombia,
multiple agents who were
there prepping for his arrival
spent a night partying, drinking
like monsters, and also doing this.
Dania Londoño Suarez says the three men
who approached and propositioned
her and her friends,
she assumed they were tourists,
were drinking vodka, quote,
"like it was water,"
but were still coherent.
She says she made it clear
that a night with her would cost $800.
Muy claro.
These are very basic words:
sex, sexo, cash, money, dinero.
I made a sign with my fingers
so that he couldn't pretend
that I was charging $80 or 80 cents.
Okay. No problem. Let's go.
She says after what she describes
as "normal sex," he fell asleep.
That she could've gone through or
stolen everything in his room, but didn't.
Right.
That is a problem.
And afterwards,
a number of concerns were raised,
including that,
while those agents were asleep,
those women could've had access
to information
about the president's
whereabouts or security protocols,
or even tried to blackmail them.
Although honestly, I don't know what that
woman could've threatened that agent with
that would have been any more
humiliating than describing it
as "normal sex" on the news.
Literally just kill me.
Not "fine" or "adequate"
or even "not great but I respect
he took some big swings."
"Normal."
The setting on
a washing machine you select
when you're not competent enough
to know what's really needed.
But wait, 'cause it gets worse.
Once that woman woke the agent up,
he apparently refused to pay the $800
she said they'd agreed on,
leading local police to get involved,
with other agents
ultimately scraping together
about $250 to try to get
her to leave.
What do you think of these guys?
You laugh.
Why do you laugh so much?
They seemed, like, completely stupid.
Idiots.
I don't know how Obama had them
in his security force. What dumb men.
Yeah, very dumb! Their behavior could've
compromised the president's safety!
And look, I am not sure an assassination
could ever be made worse,
but "the president is dead
because a Secret Service agent
wanted to pay to do C-minus sex at
someone" might just do the trick.
Now, that incident highlighted
the fact the Secret Service
had a pretty toxic culture, with reports
in the wake of it containing details
like the fact married agents had
been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff
that their motto
was "wheels up, rings off."
Which obviously isn't great,
even if it does sound like the answer
to the question, "How do
you safely fist Lightning McQueen?"
And while that admittedly
happened over a decade ago,
since then,
reporters have repeatedly suggested
there's a systemic culture problem
at the agency that hasn't been fixed,
including allegations it's been "weakened
by arrogant, insular leadership,"
and a promotion system at times driven
more by personal connections than merit.
And all of this-an exhausted workforce
stretched way too thin, limited resources,
and some truly poor judgment, all
came to a head in Butler, Pennsylvania.
After that incident,
a lot of worrying facts came out,
from agents communicating poorly
with state and local law enforcement,
to not having personnel securing
the building the shooter was on,
to the fact that,
just two hours before shots were fired,
the shooter even managed to fly a drone
around the rally site for 11 minutes.
Which clearly is not ideal.
Nor is it ideal that, while
the Secret Service had brought a drone
detection system with them
that likely would've been able to
geolocate the shooter,
they couldn't use it,
because there was a technical problem
that an agent struggled for
approximately five hours to fix,
trying things like shutting the system
down and powering it back up
and calling tech support, who suggested
"the system may need a software update,"
before eventually telling them
to "swap out the ethernet cable."
But as they didn't have one of those,
they ultimately had to borrow one
from the nearby Trump
campaign's audio-visual personnel.
Thankfully, that cable finally worked,
but unfortunately,
it was about half an hour after
the shooter's drone flight had ended.
Which is a pretty tough
moment for the Secret Service,
but honestly a pretty huge moment
for the random drawer in my house
in which I've accumulated
12 different ethernet cables.
Well, well, well.
Looks like I wasn't such a fool after all.
I cannot wait for my three
mismatched AirPods
and my CD copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon
to also be proven critical somehow
to the nation's safety.
But it is worth noting, the agency
shouldn't have even needed
a drone detection system
to see something was off,
as this Trump supporter
who was at the rally points out.
We noticed a guy crawling,
army, you know,
bear crawling up the roof
of the building beside us.
50 feet away from us.
So we're standing there, you know,
we're pointing at the guy.
I'm thinking to myself,
I'm like, "Why is Trump still speaking,
why have they not
pulled him off the stage?"
I'm standing there pointing at him for,
you know, two, three minutes.
Secret Service is looking
at us from the top of the barn.
I'm pointing at that roof,
just standing there like this.
And, next thing you know,
five shots ring out.
Yeah, it's pretty bad!
Though, listen,
in the Secret Service's defense,
while they made a lot
of mistakes that day,
I'm not completely sure that ignoring
this guy was one of them.
Because if I was scanning
an area for threats and saw this man,
with his visor featuring fake Trump hair,
and a beer in hand even when talking
to the news,
shouting and waving
his arms around wildly,
I wouldn't assume he's trying
to warn me about a threat,
I think I'd just assume he was having
a meltdown
because he just took fourth
in a Guy Fieri lookalike contest.
And in addition to all
the obvious mistakes that day,
one review conducted afterward
found that agents had reported
1.2 million overtime hours that year,
with consecutive shifts and little
recuperative rest,
which had contributed
to burnout and attrition.
Meanwhile, a different review found there
were corrosive cultural attitudes
regarding resourcing and "doing more
with less"
before concluding,
"the Secret Service as an agency requires
fundamental
reform to carry out its mission.
Without that reform,
another Butler can and will happen again."
So, what do we do?
Well, obviously, giving
the agency more funding wouldn't hurt,
if it is spent wisely on
things like fixing their overtime,
or finally building
that mock White House to train on.
We could also take some responsibilities
off their plate and maybe even remove them
from the bureaucracy of DHS,
where they've been stuck since after 9/11.
Also, we could step up recruiting,
which, as you've seen,
they have been trying to do.
And it's not just that Super Bowl ad.
They're also reportedly been
spending $90 million
on a nationwide advertising campaign
with a goal of attracting
about 80,000 applicants.
But the hard truth is,
money and recruitment
won't turn newer agents into
senior agents,
and it definitely won't fix
the entrenched cultural issues.
In fact, as one of those reviews
after Butler put it,
"Even an unlimited budget
would not, by itself,
remediate many of the causes
of the failures on that day."
And that is because when a problem
is this persistent and cultural,
it needs a much
deeper level of intervention.
Look, this job ideally requires people
who are incredibly brave
and incredibly skilled.
It's a job that I personally
could not, and should not, do.
But the very fact it's such
an important job means that the agency
having an insular culture built
around "doing more with less"
isn't just exhausting for the agents
involved, it could be actively reckless.
And until that is properly addressed,
maybe the agency should stop promoting
itself to prospective recruits
as being the home of unflappable badasses
living the life of action movie heroes,
and instead be a lot more honest about
the job people are actually applying for.
America was founded
on an idea of freedom.
America's always answered
the call whenever we needed her most.
And the Secret Service
has been there through,
sorry,
can we get a different president?
Really, just any
of our less-shot-at presidents?
Sure, he'll do. The point is,
we've been there through thick and thin.
And now, America's looking
for the next generation of heroes.
Are you ready to protect the leader
of the free world
while looking cool as hell?
Then the Secret Service may
not actually be for you.
I'm sorry, what?
Sure, this job's got some action
and adventure,
but a lot of the time,
it's just this.
Hi.
So, the president's in town.
- Oh, I know.
- Come on. I got us tickets.
All right, let me get my jacket.
That's right. Sometimes America just
needs you to babysit a guy.
Guess my favorite movie.
- Guess my favorite movie.
- Is it "Taxi Driver?"
- It's "Taxi Driver."
- Yeah.
You need to be able to see
the threats others can't.
And also to see a bike rack
and pretend it's the White House.
Son of a… you're disarmed!
Because this is a job where we protect
our leaders around the clock,
occasionally get urinated
on by them…
No, he's still going.
He's done now. Wait.
Yeah, now he's done.
Sometimes have to stand outside of a door
while they cheat on their wives…
I'm close!
And act as chew toys for their dogs.
Did you bring your own butter
from home?
This isn't butter.
Jesus Christ.
And you might also get to use
your investigative skills
to help crack down on one
of America's greatest threats.
I think we got one!
Code red, code red!
Got it.
Oh, most people just tap now.
You don't need
to-you can just tap for… okay.
Are you gonna buy something, or…
You know, fun fact, Abraham Lincoln
ironically started the Secret Ser…
You gotta buy something
or you gotta get the fuck out.
We need the best of the best, who can
do the most with the absolute least.
Yes, well,
I've tried to turn it off and on again,
but… do we have
any ethernet cables?
Why would I bring
two ethernet tables?
There's a weird-looking
guy on the roof over there.
He's, like, pointing a thing
or aiming a thing at the stage.
Well, does he have any ethernet cables?
'Cause if not, now's not a good time.
- What was that?
- I tell you what it wasn't.
A gun, okay?
It's fireworks or it's gangs.
We need heroes with strength,
who can protect the American way of life,
and do all this for
a starting salary of $49,000 a year.
Wait, are you fucking serious?
Get the fuck outta here.
That's not a real number, right?
We're looking for heroes
who are ready to answer the call.
The pay is bad.
The stakes for failure are massive.
The hours will make
your family resent you forever.
And yes,
sometimes you will get shot at,
but it still needs good,
thoughtful people.
People willing to give 100%
in service of the country they love.
If that sounds like you,
America's ready to… dog!
The United States Secret Service.
We need your heart, your courage, and
a second ethernet cable if you have one.
That's our show,
thank you so much for watching,
we'll see you next week, goodnight!
Welcome home, old friend.
Welcome home.
I just disarmed
this man using only my hands.
Wait, there's more of you.
Well, guess what?
Tornado chop.
No-look punch!
Now he's unconscious,
on his way to Death Town.
We just saved the president's life.
He's shaking our hand.
He's saying,
"Thank you, son, for saving my life."
Thank you. Thank you.
Welcome, welcome,
welcome to "Last Week Tonight."
I'm John Oliver,
thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week.
French students took to
the streets to protest education cuts,
there was a disappointing U.S.
jobs report,
and former Pittsburgh Steelers
head coach Mike Tomlin
released an incredible 19-minute
YouTube video
showing off the Minecraft city
he spent over a decade building.
I started small, and of course,
over the course of 12 years, man,
you develop neighborhoods
and communities and so forth.
We'll start at the front of this very
first building that I built here in town.
And it was a boutique hotel
kind of on a bay.
Here's an executive spa
off to the left of the lobby,
with therapy rooms and so forth,
first and second floor.
And so, I just kind of wanted to have
a little spa area at the boutique hotel.
It's incredible!
It is just incredible.
It is wild to me that Mike Tomlin
was once the youngest head coach
to ever win the Super Bowl,
but that is no longer
his greatest accomplishment.
Because as we all now know,
that would be the executive spa area
in his Minecraft boutique hotel.
Tomlin apparently started playing
Minecraft "to spend time with his kids,"
but even as they got older
and moved on, he kept doing it.
His sons actually helped him
make the video tour, and I promise,
you can drop into it at literally any
point and find something magnificent.
I was always really conscious
of appropriate amenities.
You'll find, you know, an appropriate
number of public restrooms and stuff
throughout all my public facilities.
I'll give you a tour of
this aquarium at some point.
It is crazy.
You'll love it.
The crazy part is how much time it took
you to get that water situated, though.
That was a nightmare.
I used a lot of glowstone early on.
Not because I like the glowstone.
I really didn't.
But lighting was important.
Yeah, he's right!
Lighting is important.
And glowstones,
of course, emit a light level of 15,
the brightest
possible light level in the game.
You're probably thinking, "Well, John,
he could've gotten a 15 from lanterns,
sea lanterns, jack-o'-lanterns,
redstone lamps,
conduits, beacons,
shroomlights, or froglights.
But what's he supposed to do?
Use a shroomlight?
A shroomlight in the bar
area with the pool? Please.
Tomlin may not love the glowstone,
but unlike you, the man has taste.
This whole video is so
filled with joy, but honestly,
I think my favorite
part is the title "Episode 1."
Because fuck yes!
I cannot wait to see what
he talks about next episode,
which is frankly something no
one has ever said about this show.
Meanwhile, with the midterms
less than a month away,
polls for House Republicans look so grim
that a growing number of them
privately believe
they won't keep the majority.
It is no wonder some candidates
are now resorting to eye-catching ads
that take some big swings-perhaps none
more so than this one in North Carolina.
I'm Jennifer Balkcom.
I come from a long
line of tough mountain women.
Mom raised us on her own.
She taught us to be strong.
And when someone broke
into our house, she shot him.
You break into my house,
you're gonna get shot.
That is an interesting story
about your mom,
but I'm not sure what it has
to do with you as a candidate.
Say what you like about Liz Cheney,
at least she never ran on
"please vote for me,
my dad once shot a guy in the face."
Quick side note about Jennifer Balkcom:
she was actually a last-minute addition
to the ballot, as the Republican
incumbent, Chuck Edwards,
dropped out of the race after he
was formally censured by the House
following a months-long ethics
investigation into allegations
he sexually harassed two young
female staff members.
Some have since suggested
Edwards should also resign from Congress,
and when a reporter asked Balkcom
about that, her answer wasn't great.
Do you think he should resign
from his position,
or are you comfortable
with where things stand now?
I'm not sure.
Holy shit, that was a long pause!
Even those cows
behind her are probably like,
"I don't have time for this, and my
entire to-do list is chew grass and shit."
That pause was so long,
and I do not say this lightly,
her mom could have shot,
like, 20 intruders in that time.
And look, there'll clearly be more to
say about the midterms going forward,
but for now, we're actually gonna dive
straight in with our main story tonight,
which concerns the U.S. Secret Service.
It has long been the subject
of movies from "In the Line of Fire"
to "The Sentinel"
to "Olympus Has Fallen",
the trailer for which opens
with this truly incredible sequence.
Mustang, this is Bigtop.
Bringing out the full package.
Where'd that come from?
Get out of the car!
I'm sure she's fine.
That scene really follows a key
rule of screenwriting:
if you want to make
a man sympathetic
but you don't know how,
just kill his wife in a tragic accident.
Incidentally,
I believe that's the same strategy
the British royal family had in 1997.
But obviously, you don't just see
the Secret Service in movies,
you also hear about them
on the news.
And unfortunately,
when they're talked about on TV,
it's usually because there's
been a big mistake or a very close call.
So it's clearly not ideal that I'm about
to talk about them on TV right now.
But the reason for that is, there've been
a lot of close calls lately,
with none closer than what happened
in Butler, Pennsylvania two years ago.
The Butler, Pennsylvania shooting has
been difficult on many fronts.
We failed.
The Secret Service failed.
You know, the first and foremost is that
one person died inside a secured event.
Three other people, including a former
president, were wounded inside that event.
There's just no way you
can't use the word "failure"
when shots are fired into what is
supposed to be a secured venue.
Right, a rallygoer died
and Trump's ear got shot.
When the Secret Service
has a bad day,
those are the kinds
of consequences you can get.
It's why the agency has
a "zero-fail" mission for themselves,
with agents pointing out, "if you fail,
it can change the course of history",
a level of pressure
I truly cannot fathom.
I'm pretty confident the historical
legacy of this show
will be a few hundred thousand dollars
for food banks, a koala chlamydia ward,
and whatever the fuck is going on
with Russell Crowe's jockstrap right now.
Because, quick update,
after we auctioned the jockstrap
off at the end of last year
in aid of public media,
it was apparently put up
for auction again in August,
where I'm happy to tell you it sold
for $10,000.
And the reason I know that is
of course we fucking bought it back.
Of course we did!
I cannot wait to find out
where you're gonna go next.
The point is, agents
have a high-stakes job.
And that's what makes it so worrisome
that, by all accounts,
the Secret Service is heading
into what might be
one of its most challenging
periods yet.
For one thing, the agency says threats
against their protectees
are "off the charts" these days.
And things are about to
get even busier, as in 2028,
they'll be tasked with coordinating
protection
around the Summer Olympics
and Paralympics,
plus the annual UN General Assembly.
And that year will also see a presidential
election, fingers crossed,
which means eventual nominees
from both parties, their running mates,
and their spouses will receive
full-time Secret Service details too.
And if that wasn't enough, the agency also
expects a wave of departures before 2028,
since about a third of the workforce
will be retirement-eligible by then.
So it is no wonder
that some in the Secret Service
have privately referred
to 2028 as "armageddon."
And to be fair, it has tried to step up
recruiting efforts,
most notably with an ad that played
during last year's Super Bowl,
for which they hired none other
than Michael Bay,
and which opens with a bold
set of footage choices.
America was founded
on an idea of freedom.
America's always stepped
forward in time of need
throughout our short
but powerful history.
Ask not what your country
can do for you.
Ask what you can do
for your country.
Tear down this wall.
We've been there for all of it.
A second plane hit the tower.
What the fuck are you doing?
First, it is a little weird to try to
recruit people into the Secret Service
by highlighting three of
our most famously shot-at presidents.
Meanwhile,
the rest of that footage focuses
either on stuff that had nothing
to do with the agency, or that thing.
Though, I should say, as the ad goes on,
we do eventually get to the point.
Our heroes are humble.
They have an inner pride
to keep this idea alive.
Protectors are born.
They're not made.
America's Secret Service,
protecting this Super Bowl,
is asking a few more
to step forward.
Okay, I don't really
know what is weirder there,
the juxtaposition of humbleness
with Special Agent White Mr. T here,
or the claim that agents
"are born and not made,"
implying that you literally can't
train to be a Secret Service agent.
Though, I admit, that ad does make
them look pretty badass,
especially for an agency that,
as this image suggests,
has had some pretty close
calls recently.
That is not exactly a triumphant
moment for them, is it?
And it's a bit odd to choose
to self-promote using an image of yourself
at your lowest, even if it's a strategy
that I can frankly relate to.
So given all of that, tonight,
let's look at the Secret Service,
where it came from, why it's in
such a worrying state right now,
and what if anything
we can do to improve things.
And let's start with a little history.
Because the agency's origin story is,
to say the least, inauspicious.
It was Abraham Lincoln who created
the Secret Service 150 years ago.
And ironically, it was on
the very day he was assassinated.
Yeah, Lincoln was assassinated
just hours after
he signed the legislation
creating the Secret Service.
But in their defense, and this is the only
time they can use this, they were new.
Also, to be fair, at that point,
the agency wasn't actually tasked
with protecting the president.
Instead, they were a part
of the Treasury Department,
and had been established to crack
down on counterfeit money,
which was a big problem at the time,
given it's estimated
that about one-third of the paper money
in circulation was fake.
Although, fun fact, their work combating
counterfeiting
did eventually mean protecting Lincoln's
body, as years later,
they helped thwart a scheme hatched
by a counterfeiting ring that called
"for Lincoln's body to be stolen
from his tomb"
in order to ransom it back
to the government for,
among other things, $200,000.
Just a little fun fact for you there.
Like all fun facts, telling
it to anyone won't make them like you.
It certainly didn't make
me like the writer who insisted
on bringing it up
when discussing this piece.
But it is one of those things
that you can bring up at a party
as a way to remind people why
they shouldn't invite you to parties.
But incredibly,
it wasn't until the 20th century,
after two more presidents
had been assassinated,
that presidential protection was formally
added to the Secret Service's duties.
And they now do that
in all sorts of ways.
Some of them are obvious, like standing
beside a president when he greets a crowd.
And some are much less obvious,
like this.
There was a guy that broke into President
Reagan's house in Bel Air,
and my job for a year
and a half as his case agent was,
I would say, "President Bush
is coming into town,"
or, "Vice President Cheney's coming into
town on Tuesday. What are you doing?"
And he lived in a halfway house, and
he would say, "I'm not doing anything."
I'd say, "Let's go to a movie and
let's go eat dinner while he's here."
And so, that was
my job with another agent,
was we would go make him
happy while the president was in town,
to make sure we knew where
he was and keep tabs on him.
That is true.
Agents sometimes keep tabs on
potential threats by doing things
like taking them out somewhere
whenever the president is nearby.
And given just how much shit
I talk about our current president,
I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance
the Secret Service has a file on me,
so given that, let me just say,
I haven't seen "Oh, Mary!" yet
and I hear great things.
Apparently Bowen Yang is in it now.
I'm just saying,
if you want to keep tabs on me
the next time Trump's in New York,
I do love an aisle seat.
Now, these days,
the job of spotting threats
has clearly gotten more complex,
given how easy it is to make them online.
In fact, just watch as this agent explains
one way that they assess online threats.
Now, when I'm looking through his social
media after the initial threat,
we're looking for weapons or anything,
any comments that are nonsensical,
that's concerning.
So, this is definitely a red flag.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you're probably right.
What a keen eye you have!
Though, to be honest,
if being an agent includes needing to be
good at trawling through social
media fast to look for red flags,
it feels like they're overlooking
a huge hiring pool
of single women in their thirties.
Because believe me, Jessica could
have found that post in two seconds flat,
along with the names of all of
his sisters, exes, and preschool teachers.
"Oh, I'm sorry, you retweeted
Russell Brand in 2018? Goodbye."
Now, I should say,
even as the agency does all that,
it still has to deal with
its counterfeiting investigations.
It has an official
"dual mission of protection
and investigating financial crimes,"
which it does at 115 field offices
all over the country.
That is why you sometimes see stories
on the news
like this one from earlier
this year.
It takes less than two seconds
for this suspect
to install a skimming device
on a credit card terminal.
How are you doing, sir?
My name's Vince Porter,
I work for the Secret Service.
The Secret Service gave CBS News
exclusive access
as they search for skimmers
across Los Angeles.
They snap perfectly on
credit card terminals and ATMs,
collecting information to drain
your account with every swipe.
We got one.
Analyst Vince Porter
spotted this one right away.
Yeah, the Secret Service is also
tasked with catching card skimmers,
which is kind of incredible.
It's like being in a bad car accident
and getting rescued by Ryan Seacrest.
"Hold on, this is one of your jobs too?
You're taking a lot on."
But wait, that's still not all, they also
provide forensic and technical support
to the National Center
for Missing & Exploited Children,
and investigate things
like romance scams.
Some agents will insist
those investigations
are what keep their minds sharp,
and that they can also help establish
relationships with local law enforcement.
But that is still a lot to
be putting on their plate!
Especially given
that plate is already pretty full.
Now, obviously, the most well-known
job they have is their protective mission,
which involves
guarding not just the president,
but also the vice president,
former presidents and spouses,
visiting heads of foreign states
or governments,
distinguished foreign visitors,
major presidential and vice
presidential candidates, and more.
And being on protective duty is a much
more draining job than you may think.
Obviously, scanning a massive
crowd of people
while being willing to take a bullet
for someone is a big part of it,
but it also requires incredible amounts
of preparation known
as "advance work"
and punishingly long shifts,
all of which can take a real toll,
as this former agent explains.
At the time, I didn't understand
how stressful it was.
I would say during the time I was
in charge of President Clinton's detail,
I can't remember a night that I had
more than three hours of continuous sleep.
Everybody burns out.
No one maintains an edge constantly.
Yeah, that's not great, is it?
Three hours of sleep probably isn't enough
to effectively protect the president.
Especially given,
as any parent of a newborn will tell you,
it's barely enough to be
an operational person at all.
The most you have energy to
do at that point is just to Google,
"could I die from not enough sleep,"
and then maybe add, "please."
The point is, the toll on
your personal life can be intense.
Agents have talked about being away
from their family for weeks at a time,
missing holidays and birthdays,
with one even saying,
"Thankfully I'm not married, but if I was,
I'd probably be divorced by now."
Which is pretty alarming.
If the best you can say for your job is,
"Well, at least I'm not disappointing
and growing apart from my
nonexistent wife," that job sounds bad.
And it probably doesn't help matters
that lots of presidents have been,
not to put too fine a point on it,
weirdos and assholes.
Calvin Coolidge, for instance, apparently
had a bell he used to summon agents with,
which he'd repeatedly ring,
after which he "scampered quickly
away" to hide and watch their confusion.
And while this isn't the point,
just imagine how nice it would be
to have a president spry enough
to be able to scamper right now.
But that's just the beginning.
JFK's agents had the uncomfortable
task of standing guard
while he was pretty obviously
cheating on his wife.
The same went
for agents on Bill Clinton's detail.
Meanwhile, legend has it that LBJ
once had an agent shield him
while he was peeing outside,
during which that agent apparently felt
"something warm
and wet on his trousers."
And when he said,
"Mr. President, you're pissing on my leg,"
LBJ apparently replied, "Ah know ah am.
That's mah prerogative."
As for Trump, he's apparently complained,
"I want these fat guys off my detail,"
adding, "How are they gonna
protect me and my family
if they can't run down the street?"
Which is pretty insulting, isn't it?
I mean, not quite as insulting as the fact
he riled up a crowd of his supporters
to swarm his vice president
on January 6th,
something that apparently made members
of Pence's detail fear for their lives,
but still pretty bad!
And while it is obviously
not as dangerous as that,
during the Biden years,
agents also had to deal with this shit.
Commander is in the doghouse again!
The Bidens' two-year-old
German shepherd has bitten
another Secret Service agent,
this time a woman.
This is the 11th time in two years
the dog has sunk his teeth into someone.
"The officer was treated by medical
personnel on the White House complex,"
says a Secret Service spokesman.
A former Secret Service agent
calls Commander a "significant hazard.
It's a serious issue."
Yeah, it really was!
Commander actually bit
Secret Service agents at least 24 times.
Which is obviously terrible, although
do spare a thought for Commander,
who probably felt bad enough already,
then had to watch that clip thinking,
"Don't use that one picture of me.
Just don't use that one picture.
Please don't use that one,
aw, fuck!
Come on! That's taken out of context!
I was saying hi to a friend!"
So clearly, agents have to put
up with an enormous amount of shit,
while doing an utterly exhausting job,
where incidentally,
the starting salary
is just over $49,000 a year.
And while you can bring
that up through things like locality pay
and other benefits,
those can only go so far,
since they're also
subject to a federal salary cap.
So once you hit that annual cap,
even if it is only September,
you can't then get paid any more,
meaning that after a certain point,
your overtime hours are worked for free.
And while a few years back,
Congress stepped in
and passed legislation that provides
overtime for staffers
who work in protection,
that measure notably expires in 2028,
a fact conveniently left out
of that Super Bowl recruitment ad.
And the thing is,
that is just the tip of the iceberg
when it comes
to the agency's budget issues.
Because for as high as the stakes
of their job are,
they've consistently been
stretched worryingly thin
in terms of manpower and resources.
In fact, there's even a motto
many agents have been known to use,
"We do more with less," an attitude
that can manifest in a number of ways.
For instance, years ago,
the agency requested funding
to build a detailed replica
of the White House
to help train officers and agents
to protect the real thing.
Which makes sense.
But it has never been built.
And if you're wondering how
they've sometimes had to train instead,
just watch this.
So, this bike rack is how you do
your White House fence training?
Yeah, this bike rack
is a representation
of what we have
as the north fence line downtown.
And the White House?
The White House is the trees
you see back there.
Sergeant Darrione Nall says his officers
have to use their imagination,
running through trees as if they were
rooms in the White House.
How much of a disadvantage
is that from a training perspective?
It can be a huge disadvantage.
Yeah, they have to use their imagination.
And picturing
something crucial for your job
clearly isn't what
your imagination is for.
It should be for
whimsical flights of fantasy,
like picturing yourself on a beach,
or floating in a tranquil pool,
or getting your skin peeled like
an orange slowly from top to bottom,
or taking a romantic cruise,
or soaring among the stars,
or the unpeeling continuing down
your shoulders now, it doesn't hurt,
you're not hurting an orange when you do
it, the orange likes it, it feels fine.
Or falling softly onto a cushy cloud,
or the feeling of the peel going down
the small of your back,
a chill as you wonder what
sensations your new skin will bring.
Or nice, hot soup on a snowy day.
Or the peel's reached your thighs now,
and I lied before,
it does hurt a little,
that's actually part of it.
Every orange would scream if it could.
And then you step
out of your peel and you're new,
but you're also the you that's
been inside you this whole time.
And now they'll see, now they'll all see,
the real you won't be denied,
can't be denied!
Or a nice walk.
You know, just regular things
that we all use our imagination for.
Anyway, it has now gotten to the point
where the agency's even sent agents
to train at an 80% scale mock
White House in Atlanta.
And not just any
mock White House, by the way.
One built as a TV set by Tyler Perry
for this soapy drama
that ran for seven seasons.
Here's just a taste.
Who the hell do you think you are?
I'm the bitch that put you
in this damn seat.
- You are not leaving.
- Watch me.
Tase her.
I wish you would.
Your mother is here, ma'am.
We made that hillbilly
the president.
If I have to come back,
one of you will die.
From one soap actor to another, respect.
So, the agency
is often stretched extremely thin,
and that's happened even
as their duties have increased.
During the last presidential election,
they've reported having to protect
as many as 43 individuals
around the clock.
And now Trump's in office again,
they have been extremely busy,
as the Trumps
tend to take a lot of family trips.
For context, where Obama's family
took around 133 protected trips per year,
during Trump's first term alone,
his family took an average of over 1,600.
And if there's any member of the Trump
family watching this right now
who's learning for the first time
that the rest of your family's been
taking over 1,600 trips without you,
then I'm truly sorry you had to
find out this way, whoever you are, Eric.
And it's not just the Trumps,
by the way.
Agents have also grumbled about
the demands JD Vance's family put on them,
especially as they apparently
frequently change plans without warning,
forcing agents to cancel
their days off, drop other plans,
and often race to
the location where they are needed,
while also having to come
up with security plans in a hurry.
In fact, frustration over accommodating
Vance's schedule is so common,
agents on his detail apparently even
made custom coins and stickers to mock it.
They read "Bobcat OTR Survivors Club."
"Bobcat" because that's Vance's security
codename, "OTR" because "off the record"
is the term for hasty, unplanned trips,
and coins and stickers
because I'm guessing they're not allowed
to get way with T-shirts that say,
"Fuck this guy."
The point here is, the agency
is clearly under significant strain.
But even that
doesn't completely account
for the number of inexplicable
fuckups that there have been,
which have happened
at an accelerating rate
ever since the start
of the Obama presidency.
Now, that was a moment when, admittedly,
their job did become much more difficult,
given the agency reportedly
experienced a 400% increase
in the number of
threats against the president.
And if you do not know why violent
threats went up from this guy to this guy,
I've got some interesting
news for you: you are a liar.
And with threats on the rise, you'd think
the agency would've been on high alert,
which is what makes it so weird
that they had a number of
security breaches and scandals,
some of which you might
not even remember, like this one.
Washington, D.C.,
September 19th, 2014.
At 7:20 PM, 42-year-old
Omar J. Gonzalez
scales the iron perimeter fence
of the White House
and races 70 yards across the lawn
through the north portico doors.
Gonzalez not only scaled
the outside fence,
but he got inside the White House,
which was not locked.
Yeah, a guy ran straight in,
and with a knife, by the way.
That is shocking for a bunch of reasons,
including that the White House
front door wasn't locked.
It's like finding out
the nuclear codes are "password1234."
I guess I just assumed
it'd be more secure than that.
But of all the close calls
during the Obama administration,
the scariest might've been
what happened in 2011,
when a man aimed a high-powered
rifle at the White House
and fired at least eight shots.
He apparently harbored paranoid beliefs,
including that Obama was the Antichrist,
and that he himself
was the modern-day Jesus.
And to be fair, when you see
a picture of him, you can kind of see it.
Anyway,
those bullets hit the White House,
with several hitting
the part of the building
where the president and his family live.
But the Secret Service initially
wrote the incident off as gang members
who engaged in a gunfight
near the White House's front lawn.
In fact, it took them four days
to realize that shots
had hit the White House residence,
a discovery that only came about
because a housekeeper noticed the broken
glass and a chunk of cement on the floor.
But perhaps the stupidest incident
in the Obama years
had nothing to do
with a lack of resources,
and much more to do with the agency having
some entrenched cultural problems.
It happened in Cartagena, and the quickest
explanation is that
ahead of Obama's visit to Colombia,
multiple agents who were
there prepping for his arrival
spent a night partying, drinking
like monsters, and also doing this.
Dania Londoño Suarez says the three men
who approached and propositioned
her and her friends,
she assumed they were tourists,
were drinking vodka, quote,
"like it was water,"
but were still coherent.
She says she made it clear
that a night with her would cost $800.
Muy claro.
These are very basic words:
sex, sexo, cash, money, dinero.
I made a sign with my fingers
so that he couldn't pretend
that I was charging $80 or 80 cents.
Okay. No problem. Let's go.
She says after what she describes
as "normal sex," he fell asleep.
That she could've gone through or
stolen everything in his room, but didn't.
Right.
That is a problem.
And afterwards,
a number of concerns were raised,
including that,
while those agents were asleep,
those women could've had access
to information
about the president's
whereabouts or security protocols,
or even tried to blackmail them.
Although honestly, I don't know what that
woman could've threatened that agent with
that would have been any more
humiliating than describing it
as "normal sex" on the news.
Literally just kill me.
Not "fine" or "adequate"
or even "not great but I respect
he took some big swings."
"Normal."
The setting on
a washing machine you select
when you're not competent enough
to know what's really needed.
But wait, 'cause it gets worse.
Once that woman woke the agent up,
he apparently refused to pay the $800
she said they'd agreed on,
leading local police to get involved,
with other agents
ultimately scraping together
about $250 to try to get
her to leave.
What do you think of these guys?
You laugh.
Why do you laugh so much?
They seemed, like, completely stupid.
Idiots.
I don't know how Obama had them
in his security force. What dumb men.
Yeah, very dumb! Their behavior could've
compromised the president's safety!
And look, I am not sure an assassination
could ever be made worse,
but "the president is dead
because a Secret Service agent
wanted to pay to do C-minus sex at
someone" might just do the trick.
Now, that incident highlighted
the fact the Secret Service
had a pretty toxic culture, with reports
in the wake of it containing details
like the fact married agents had
been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff
that their motto
was "wheels up, rings off."
Which obviously isn't great,
even if it does sound like the answer
to the question, "How do
you safely fist Lightning McQueen?"
And while that admittedly
happened over a decade ago,
since then,
reporters have repeatedly suggested
there's a systemic culture problem
at the agency that hasn't been fixed,
including allegations it's been "weakened
by arrogant, insular leadership,"
and a promotion system at times driven
more by personal connections than merit.
And all of this-an exhausted workforce
stretched way too thin, limited resources,
and some truly poor judgment, all
came to a head in Butler, Pennsylvania.
After that incident,
a lot of worrying facts came out,
from agents communicating poorly
with state and local law enforcement,
to not having personnel securing
the building the shooter was on,
to the fact that,
just two hours before shots were fired,
the shooter even managed to fly a drone
around the rally site for 11 minutes.
Which clearly is not ideal.
Nor is it ideal that, while
the Secret Service had brought a drone
detection system with them
that likely would've been able to
geolocate the shooter,
they couldn't use it,
because there was a technical problem
that an agent struggled for
approximately five hours to fix,
trying things like shutting the system
down and powering it back up
and calling tech support, who suggested
"the system may need a software update,"
before eventually telling them
to "swap out the ethernet cable."
But as they didn't have one of those,
they ultimately had to borrow one
from the nearby Trump
campaign's audio-visual personnel.
Thankfully, that cable finally worked,
but unfortunately,
it was about half an hour after
the shooter's drone flight had ended.
Which is a pretty tough
moment for the Secret Service,
but honestly a pretty huge moment
for the random drawer in my house
in which I've accumulated
12 different ethernet cables.
Well, well, well.
Looks like I wasn't such a fool after all.
I cannot wait for my three
mismatched AirPods
and my CD copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon
to also be proven critical somehow
to the nation's safety.
But it is worth noting, the agency
shouldn't have even needed
a drone detection system
to see something was off,
as this Trump supporter
who was at the rally points out.
We noticed a guy crawling,
army, you know,
bear crawling up the roof
of the building beside us.
50 feet away from us.
So we're standing there, you know,
we're pointing at the guy.
I'm thinking to myself,
I'm like, "Why is Trump still speaking,
why have they not
pulled him off the stage?"
I'm standing there pointing at him for,
you know, two, three minutes.
Secret Service is looking
at us from the top of the barn.
I'm pointing at that roof,
just standing there like this.
And, next thing you know,
five shots ring out.
Yeah, it's pretty bad!
Though, listen,
in the Secret Service's defense,
while they made a lot
of mistakes that day,
I'm not completely sure that ignoring
this guy was one of them.
Because if I was scanning
an area for threats and saw this man,
with his visor featuring fake Trump hair,
and a beer in hand even when talking
to the news,
shouting and waving
his arms around wildly,
I wouldn't assume he's trying
to warn me about a threat,
I think I'd just assume he was having
a meltdown
because he just took fourth
in a Guy Fieri lookalike contest.
And in addition to all
the obvious mistakes that day,
one review conducted afterward
found that agents had reported
1.2 million overtime hours that year,
with consecutive shifts and little
recuperative rest,
which had contributed
to burnout and attrition.
Meanwhile, a different review found there
were corrosive cultural attitudes
regarding resourcing and "doing more
with less"
before concluding,
"the Secret Service as an agency requires
fundamental
reform to carry out its mission.
Without that reform,
another Butler can and will happen again."
So, what do we do?
Well, obviously, giving
the agency more funding wouldn't hurt,
if it is spent wisely on
things like fixing their overtime,
or finally building
that mock White House to train on.
We could also take some responsibilities
off their plate and maybe even remove them
from the bureaucracy of DHS,
where they've been stuck since after 9/11.
Also, we could step up recruiting,
which, as you've seen,
they have been trying to do.
And it's not just that Super Bowl ad.
They're also reportedly been
spending $90 million
on a nationwide advertising campaign
with a goal of attracting
about 80,000 applicants.
But the hard truth is,
money and recruitment
won't turn newer agents into
senior agents,
and it definitely won't fix
the entrenched cultural issues.
In fact, as one of those reviews
after Butler put it,
"Even an unlimited budget
would not, by itself,
remediate many of the causes
of the failures on that day."
And that is because when a problem
is this persistent and cultural,
it needs a much
deeper level of intervention.
Look, this job ideally requires people
who are incredibly brave
and incredibly skilled.
It's a job that I personally
could not, and should not, do.
But the very fact it's such
an important job means that the agency
having an insular culture built
around "doing more with less"
isn't just exhausting for the agents
involved, it could be actively reckless.
And until that is properly addressed,
maybe the agency should stop promoting
itself to prospective recruits
as being the home of unflappable badasses
living the life of action movie heroes,
and instead be a lot more honest about
the job people are actually applying for.
America was founded
on an idea of freedom.
America's always answered
the call whenever we needed her most.
And the Secret Service
has been there through,
sorry,
can we get a different president?
Really, just any
of our less-shot-at presidents?
Sure, he'll do. The point is,
we've been there through thick and thin.
And now, America's looking
for the next generation of heroes.
Are you ready to protect the leader
of the free world
while looking cool as hell?
Then the Secret Service may
not actually be for you.
I'm sorry, what?
Sure, this job's got some action
and adventure,
but a lot of the time,
it's just this.
Hi.
So, the president's in town.
- Oh, I know.
- Come on. I got us tickets.
All right, let me get my jacket.
That's right. Sometimes America just
needs you to babysit a guy.
Guess my favorite movie.
- Guess my favorite movie.
- Is it "Taxi Driver?"
- It's "Taxi Driver."
- Yeah.
You need to be able to see
the threats others can't.
And also to see a bike rack
and pretend it's the White House.
Son of a… you're disarmed!
Because this is a job where we protect
our leaders around the clock,
occasionally get urinated
on by them…
No, he's still going.
He's done now. Wait.
Yeah, now he's done.
Sometimes have to stand outside of a door
while they cheat on their wives…
I'm close!
And act as chew toys for their dogs.
Did you bring your own butter
from home?
This isn't butter.
Jesus Christ.
And you might also get to use
your investigative skills
to help crack down on one
of America's greatest threats.
I think we got one!
Code red, code red!
Got it.
Oh, most people just tap now.
You don't need
to-you can just tap for… okay.
Are you gonna buy something, or…
You know, fun fact, Abraham Lincoln
ironically started the Secret Ser…
You gotta buy something
or you gotta get the fuck out.
We need the best of the best, who can
do the most with the absolute least.
Yes, well,
I've tried to turn it off and on again,
but… do we have
any ethernet cables?
Why would I bring
two ethernet tables?
There's a weird-looking
guy on the roof over there.
He's, like, pointing a thing
or aiming a thing at the stage.
Well, does he have any ethernet cables?
'Cause if not, now's not a good time.
- What was that?
- I tell you what it wasn't.
A gun, okay?
It's fireworks or it's gangs.
We need heroes with strength,
who can protect the American way of life,
and do all this for
a starting salary of $49,000 a year.
Wait, are you fucking serious?
Get the fuck outta here.
That's not a real number, right?
We're looking for heroes
who are ready to answer the call.
The pay is bad.
The stakes for failure are massive.
The hours will make
your family resent you forever.
And yes,
sometimes you will get shot at,
but it still needs good,
thoughtful people.
People willing to give 100%
in service of the country they love.
If that sounds like you,
America's ready to… dog!
The United States Secret Service.
We need your heart, your courage, and
a second ethernet cable if you have one.
That's our show,
thank you so much for watching,
we'll see you next week, goodnight!
Welcome home, old friend.
Welcome home.
I just disarmed
this man using only my hands.
Wait, there's more of you.
Well, guess what?
Tornado chop.
No-look punch!
Now he's unconscious,
on his way to Death Town.
We just saved the president's life.
He's shaking our hand.
He's saying,
"Thank you, son, for saving my life."
Thank you. Thank you.