Former president Donald Trump came to the defense of the female Secret Service agent who assisted him during his attempted assassination on July 13. Trump made the comments on Saturday during a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota. “There was great bravery displayed… Every one of them. There wasn’t one that was slow,” Trump said. “There was a woman to my right shielding me. A beautiful person. She was shielding me with everything she could… She got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough. She was criticized and she was so brave… She was shielding me with everything. She wanted to take a bullet,” he told the crowd, according to the New York Post. Trump’s comments come on the heels of a barrage of sexist rhetoric pointed toward female Secret Service agents by far-right commentators online, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In response to the criticism, Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson, said to CNN in part, “It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce.”
