A harrowing situation was caught on video when a plainclothes Secret Service agent intervened when a man got too close to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and daughter were walking to their car after being out on the town in South Beach, Florida, on Sunday night when the incident occurred.
RealClearPolitics national political correspondent Susan Crabtree captured the scene on video when the man got too close to Kushner and Trump.
The Secret Service agent placed his arm in the way of the man, and the two protected members of the first family.
But the man grabbed the arm of the Secret Service agent, who responded by shoving the man hard.
“A Secret Service agent wasn’t taking any chances last night. It appears that the agent believed a man got too close to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as they were leaving an event in South Beach and aggressively pushed him away,” the reporter said in a post on X that included the video.
“The man then complained and appeared to grab the agent. Some Secret Service agents say this is an example of an agent getting too rough with the public, and a possible indication of worktime stress as many USSS agent details are continuing to be stretched thin with long hours, including on VP Vance’s detail,” Crabtree said.
“Yet, such an aggressive push may not be that uncommon. I, too, have been pushed forcefully aside when I thought I was minding my own business. I was up in the hall near the press gallery — and the USSS agents were clearing the way for First Lady Michelle Obama to come through before a SOTU. I was shaken up a little, but understood that the agents are on high alert on nights like those,” the reporter said.
“I’m also used to getting pushed and shoved from very aggressive photographers, cameramen and women on Capitol Hill and at the White House, so I sort of view it as a cost of doing business in D.C. journalism,” she said.
In April it was reported that the Secret Service has “deep flaws” that allowed the attack at the Trump campaign rally, according to an independent panel that reviewed the July assassination attempt against then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The panel also called for the agency’s “fundamental reform” to fulfill its mission of protecting top government officials worldwide.
The independent review panel noted in a letter signed by all four members that it had discovered “numerous mistakes” during its investigation that resulted in the attempted assassination of Trump, but also “deeper systemic issues that must be addressed with urgency.”
“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” the members said. “Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”
The panel dedicated its work to Corey Comperatore, who was killed in the shooting, and James Copenhaver and David Dutch, who were injured, as well as their families.
“These actions will be responsive not only to the security failures that led to the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt but, importantly, to what the Independent Review Panel describes as systemic and foundational issues that underlie those failures,” the members said.
The group also cited “deeper concerns” it had discovered regarding the Secret Service, such as a “troubling lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service personnel in the days leading up to and following the assassination attempt, “corrosive cultural attitudes” regarding resources, and a “lack of clarity” regarding who has security ownership of a protectee’s site.
It criticized Secret Service leadership for what the panel claimed was an “insufficiently experience-based approach” by Trump’s detail regarding the choice of agents to carry out security-critical tasks and a failure to assume responsibility for security planning and execution at the Butler rally.
The breakdowns “reveal deep flaws in the Secret Service, including some that appear to be systemic or cultural,” according to the report.
It recommended new Secret Service leadership with outside agency experience and a return to its “core protective mission” to address the panel’s identified problems.
“The Secret Service must be the world’s leading governmental protective organization,” according to the report. “The events at Butler on July 13 demonstrate that, currently, it is not.”