Tangle - The Secret Service director resigns.

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Harris deep dive.

In this week's Friday edition, we are going to do a deep dive on Vice President Kamala Harris. How did she get into politics? How did she become vice president? How might her presidency look different from Biden’s? We’ll share takes from her supporters and detractors, and then I’ll give my take.

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Quick hits.

1. President Biden will address the nation at 8pm ET tonight about his decision to end his 2024 campaign for reelection. (The address)
2. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address Congress today at the request of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). (The speech) Lawmakers have been told to expect upwards of 10,000 protesters on Capitol Hill today. (The protests)
3. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said he will resign next month after being convicted on corruption charges. (The announcement)
4. U.S. home prices hit a record high in June for the second straight month. The median price for an existing home rose to $426,900. (The numbers)
5. The U.S. Department of Transportation is investigating Delta over recent flight disruptions as the airline struggles to resume normal service following the global IT outage at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. (The investigation)

Today's topic.

Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation. On Tuesday, Kimberly Cheatle resigned her position as Director of the Secret Service (USSS) following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. In a statement, President Joe Biden thanked Cheatle for her “decades of public service” and said he would appoint her successor to lead the Secret Service "soon." 

On Monday, Cheatle responded to a subpoena to testify in front of the House Committee of Oversight and Reform, answering heated questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Cheatle revealed some new information about the incident, including that the roof where Trump’s shooter opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally, but said she was unable to answer many of the committee members’ most pressing questions due to the ongoing investigation into the shooting. 

Following the hearing, Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) co-signed a statement calling on Cheatle to resign, describing the assassination attempt as a “stunning operational failure.” On Tuesday, Cheatle informed USSS staff of her resignation in an internal email.

“In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director,” Cheatle wrote. “The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders and financial infrastructure. On July 13th, we fell short on that mission… As your Director, I take full responsibility for the security lapse.”

Cheatle was named Director of the Secret Service in September 2022, following her position as Senior Director of Global Security for PepsiCo. Prior to that role, she served in the USSS for 27 years. In an interview three days after the shooting, Cheatle accepted responsibility for the security failure but said she planned to continue as director. Her decision to resign now follows bipartisan calls for her to step down amid anger over the attempted assassination and frustration about her lack of clarity during her hearing.

“Egregious security failures leading up to and at the Butler, Pennsylvania campaign rally resulted in the assassination attempt of President Trump, the murder of an innocent victim, and harm to others in the crowd,” Rep. Comer said in a statement. “We will continue our oversight of the Secret Service in support of the House Task Force to deliver transparency, accountability, and solutions to ensure this never happens again.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced the formation of a House task force to investigate the shooting, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is heading a separate investigation. The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing today about the FBI investigation, with agency director Christopher Wray testifying.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (the federal department that oversees the Secret Service) named USSS Deputy Director Ronald L. Rowe as the agency’s acting director. Rowe is a 24-year veteran of the Secret Service.

Today, we’ll cover Cheatle’s resignation and the continuing fallout from the Trump assassination attempt, with views from the left and right. Then, my take.

Agreeed.

• Both sides welcome Cheatle’s resignation, suggesting accountability for the assassination attempt needs to start at the top of the Secret Service. 
• The left and right applaud lawmakers from both parties for their tough questioning of Cheatle at the House hearing. 
• They also agree that more changes are needed to address systemic issues at the Secret Service.

What the left is saying.

• The left commends the bipartisan effort to hold the Secret Service accountable for its failures. 
• Some say Cheatle should have resigned immediately after the assassination attempt.
• Others say Cheatle’s poor communication with the public exacerbated the fallout from the shooting.

The Star Tribune editorial board said Cheatle was “right to resign.” 

“Cheatle was right to resign. In fact, she should have done so sooner. But a secondary story related to the resignation is also notable: a rare breakout of bipartisan congressional consensus surrounding the issue, on display at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Monday in which exasperated Democrats matched their Republican colleagues' anger at answers — or more often, nonanswers — to representatives' questions,” the board wrote. “While the GOP lawmakers' rhetoric was hotter, Democrats, including coolheaded Jamie Raskin of Maryland, spoke for Congress and the country when he said that he ‘didn't see any daylight between the members of the two parties today at the hearing, in terms of our bafflement and outrage.’”

“There are scores more performances in the federal government that merit bafflement and indeed even outrage at this urgent and tender moment. And Congress and the country would be well-served by bipartisan focus on them, ideally resulting in fixes. But for now, it's reassuring — and maybe even worthy of its own headline — to see that Washington can work after one of its entities failed to do so on that fateful day in Pennsylvania.”

In The Charlotte Observer, Issac Bailey wrote “Congress did what was right.”

“Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle had to go. I’m surprised it took an hours-long grilling from Republicans and Democrats during an oversight hearing to make that clear to her. Truth be told, though, our problems haven’t disappeared just because Cheatle stepped down Tuesday,” Bailey said. “Though it was clear before the hearing that Republicans and Democrats calling for Cheatle’s job were right, the hearing made that even more clear. She turned in her resignation Tuesday morning, something she should have done the morning after a young man came within millimeters of killing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.”

“During the hearing, we didn’t get many good answers as to why this happened or how a 20-year-old seeming loner was able to get a direct shot at a former president. Cheatle dodged most of the questions, citing security concerns about not wanting to reveal too many tactical details in public, knowing that even our enemies would be watching,” Bailey wrote. “On one level, her repeated non-answers made for a frustrating hearing. On another, it highlighted something just as important as the shooting. It feels as though much of the public moved on too quickly after we found out the alleged shooter was nonpartisan and may not have had a grudge against either political party.”

In The New York Times, Gerald Posner and Mark S. Zaid argued “the government has failed America since the Trump shooting.”

“Until this week there had not been a single news conference by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security, no release of files that might show the preparations for securing vulnerable locations from which an assassin might strike, not even a formal news release from the officials facing criticism for unmistakable miscues caught on video by those at the rally,” Posner and Zaid said. “The silence looked particularly bad given news reports, initially denied by the government, that top Secret Service officials over a two-year span rejected repeated requests for more agents and magnetometers at Mr. Trump’s large public events.”

“Cheatle, who resigned on Tuesday, told Congress, ‘The assets that were requested for that day were given.’ Still, suspicions were allowed to fester that Mr. Trump’s protection service was deliberately lax,” Posner and Zaid wrote. “No one expects instant answers; that would provoke as much skepticism as a long delay. But the public has become accustomed to officials holding regular news conferences in the aftermath of tragedies and disasters. The public will tolerate ‘We are not sure yet’ or ‘that is still under investigation’ if other facts are revealed as the investigators uncover them.”

What the right is saying.

• The right praises members from both parties for holding Cheatle accountable. 
• Some say the hearing was the final nail in the coffin for Cheatle’s job.
• Others say more changes are needed at the Secret Service to restore trust in the agency.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called for “a Secret Service house cleaning.”

“Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, recognizing the inevitable 11 days after her agency failed to protect Donald Trump from a potential assassin some 150 yards away. New leadership is needed to restore the agency’s credibility and competence, but also welcome on Tuesday was the creation of a House task force to investigate the security failure,” the board said. “The task force will have subpoena power and include seven Republicans and six Democrats. The bipartisan makeup is encouraging, signaling that, even in our rancorous times, both parties recognize the need to discover what went wrong at the Secret Service and report those facts to the public.

“President Biden has also launched a government investigation, but the political reality is that Americans might not trust a report from the executive branch on a failure by the executive branch,” the board wrote. “Americans have little trust in government these days, and the Secret Service’s stunning failure to protect Mr. Trump adds to the reasons. The goal of the House probe should be to get to the truth, draw accurate conclusions, and report them without political favor to the American people.”

In Hot Air, Ed Morrissey said Cheatle was right to resign after her “Capitol Hill humiliation.”

“In an administration marked by a disgraceful retreat from Kabul that left 13 service members dead and 14,000 Americans left behind to the Taliban, a border crisis that still rages, a bungled response to supply-chain crises and a derailment in East Palestine, Kimberly Cheatle becomes the first to suffer consequences for embarrassing incompetence,” Morrissey wrote. “By the end of the hearing, everyone began demanding her resignation, especially because Cheatle stonewalled the congressional committee throughout her testimony. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn't believe that Cheatle wanted another 60 days to provide answers on the ability of the Secret Service to protect its assigned notables, for instance. By the time Cheatle finished her testimony, she had no political cover whatsoever.”

“Mayorkas should have to answer for this too. He's already been impeached over the border crisis and his failures to protect the national security of the United States. DHS is looking like an asylum for incompetents on Mayorkas' watch, not a necessary bulwark against threats to the US collectively or individually. His initial impulse to support Cheatle despite the worst body-protection failure of the agency since 1981 also needs immediate attention from Congress. But at least one person has been held accountable.”

In Fox News, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) wrote about “how we fix the USSS before it's too late.”

“One would think that Cheatle had done her research to know every detail of the events of that day; however, her testimony suggested the total opposite. Former Director Cheatle provided nonsensical, incoherent, and unsubstantive answers to basic questions from my colleagues and me on both sides of the aisle,” Fallon said. “I’m glad to see former Director Cheatle tender her resignation on Tuesday. In truth, I would have liked to have seen her fired instead. Accountability starts from the top, and we must take a hard look at the failures that led to President Trump’s near-assassination at the hands of a 20-year-old, untrained loner.”

“Cheatle’s comments and testimony make clear that this mission was on the pathway to failure during the planning process… The obvious lapses in basic security and planning principles are shocking, distressing and extremely troublesome. This can only happen if there is an alarming level of incompetence at the agency’s highest levels,” Fallon wrote. “A change of culture at the Secret Service and the DHS as a whole is required. Former Director Cheatle’s resignation is the first step on what seems like a long journey towards ensuring the safety of all high-profile protectees by the agency whose sole responsibility is to do so–the U.S. Secret Service.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism, or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The best reason for Cheatle to have kept her job is that the blame for this failure is spread among many people, and I wouldn’t even say she’s the one who’s most responsible.
• However, she is the person at the top, and what she is responsible for is the inadequate response to the attempted assassination.
• Her resignation was inevitable after the hearing, and I hope now the Secret Service can take the steps it needs to better protect our most visible politicians.

This is a rare day when the left and right agree. Both sides make strong points that I also find compelling, but if I wanted to offer a contrarian take on this story, it'd look something like this: There are probably a dozen or so people who I'd place above Cheatle on my blame pyramid for the assassination attempt. She's the leader of the agency, sure, but what about all the law enforcement officers on the ground who didn't respond to attendees alerting them to a shooter on the roof of a nearby building? What about the local police who failed to stop the shooter even after attempting to engage him? What about the security coordinators who allowed minutes to go by without responding to those warnings? It seems odd to me that those people haven't been fired, resigned, or taken more scrutiny.

In the wake of public failures like this, I sometimes wonder whether cleaning house from the top down is actually better than allowing leaders to learn from their failures and shake up their organizations from the inside. As former Secret Service Agent Bill Gage told me in an interview with Tangle last week, glaring lapses can occur even under stalwart leadership: “You could have George Patton as the head of the Secret Service or another famous war general, and if there's a faulty security plan, it doesn't matter who the director of the Secret Service is — bad things could happen," he said. "I don't mean to diminish the director's position, but I'm just saying you can't pin all of the blame on her.”

Again: If I wanted to offer you an alternative perspective, that's the strongest one I have.

But the buck stops with leaders, for better or worse. We hold presidents responsible for our economy, foreign wars, immigration issues, healthcare, the cost of a gallon of gas, and the quality of our public schools — all at once. Do I think the president is the person most responsible for those things? No. But the leader at the top — whether it’s a president or the head of an agency like the Secret Service — is responsible for recognizing organizational failures, articulating them to the public, and rolling up their sleeves to find solutions.

The strongest reason to remove Cheatle isn’t the attempted assassination itself — it’s the recalcitrant lack of transparency she’s demonstrated in response to it. She dodged question after question on Capitol Hill, has been unable (or unwilling) to communicate what caused the massive security failure, and is directly responsible for the circular blame game the Secret Service continues to play with local police. If Cheatle had come out in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and communicated clearly about exactly what had happened, why security had failed and what the agency needed to do to fix it, that would have been a sign of a functioning organization engaged in healthy self-criticism. To me, that she couldn't provide those answers sends a distressing signal that maybe the Secret Service still doesn’t have them. Cheatle might share the blame for the security failure itself, but the opacity, obfuscation, and confusion that followed the shooting — that all falls on Cheatle.

In the end, Cheatle’s resignation was a foregone conclusion. Watching the hearing, it was clear she was going to have to resign, given the bipartisan furor over her answers and the similarly bipartisan calls for her to step down. Hopefully this sends the kind of shockwave through the organization that demands a full accounting (and maybe more funding) to ensure our current, former, and future presidents — and their families — are much safer going forward.

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Your questions, answered.

significant concern. However, the issue of Trump and Biden's responses to such a scenario seem to be largely overlooked. Trump’s recent comments suggest a reluctance to defend Taiwan, but his exact stance still seems unclear. How do you think each candidate would respond if Taiwan is attacked?

— Jared from Wenatchee, WA

Tangle: First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room here — there is no longer a candidate Biden in the 2024 election. But there is a candidate Trump, so let’s start with him.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last week, former President Donald Trump said, "I know the people very well, respect them greatly. They [Taiwan] did take about 100% of our chip business. I think Taiwan should pay us for defense.” He went further, saying, “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything."

The comments sparked pushback in Taiwan. "We’ve increased spending and readiness and I think we pay enough," Joann Ko (Ko Chih-en), an influential lawmaker, told Fox News. “The United States is welcome to offer advice, and we will take any proposals seriously. But I can’t agree with those comments." Others, including U.S. State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller, have noted that Taiwan does pay for its own defense.

As a quick “my take” on these comments, I think they’re exactly what we’ve come to expect from Trump. It’s an exaggerated claim (Taiwan did not take “100% of our chip business”) levied against an ally, as well as an outright lie (Taiwan does indeed pay for U.S. weapons), paired with a directionally smart posture: pressure Taiwan to give us more and hold firm on an “America first” position. 

It’s also a Rorschach test on Trump’s intentions: Is he trying to ramp up pressure for other U.S. allies to do more and take the load off our international responsibilities, or is he signaling to China that the U.S. is wavering in its commitment to Taiwan? It’s impossible to say, but I’m betting on the former. Trump has long centered China as the greatest security and economic threat to the U.S., and genuinely brought Biden (and much of Congress) with him. I don’t think he is intending to signal to President Xi that he will be free to attack Taiwan under his administration; I think he’s sending Taiwan a signal that a future President Trump will push for more in exchange for the implicit security we offer.

That being said, it might be true that the odds of China attacking Taiwan go up if Trump gets re-elected, given that his stance is murkier than the Biden administration’s. Wall Street seems to agree.

As for what a President Kamala Harris would do if Taiwan is attacked, we know much less about that. This Friday, we’re going to do a deep dive on the new presumptive Democratic nominee, covering her foreign policy positions and more, which will hopefully give you a little better idea of how to think about that question.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

One day after Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified before Congress, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris also testified. His testimony, which received much less coverage, revealed stunning new details around the security failures at the Trump campaign rally on July 13. According to Paris, two local law enforcement officers left a building with a vantage point of Crooks to look for a suspicious person — who ended up being Crooks. Paris also testified that a municipal officer came face to face with Crooks during the several minutes he was on the roof, adding that only a few seconds had passed between Crooks turning his rifle on one of the officers, which caused him to drop from the roof, and Crooks firing on Trump. Finally, Paris said “a text thread” between Butler County Emergency Services Unit officers that contained observations about Crooks was not shared with Secret Service agents. The officers who spotted Crooks using a range-finder eventually called state police, which was then relayed to the Secret Service. CNN has the story. 

Numbers.

• 1995. The year Kimberly Cheatle joined the Secret Service. 
• 8. The number of direct attacks on U.S. presidents since the Secret Service began protecting the president in 1901. 
• 0. The number of Secret Service directors who lost their jobs as the result of an assassination attempt on a president before Cheatle’s resignation on Tuesday.
• 1981. The year of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, the last time a sitting president was shot. 
• 1968. The year Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, the last time a major presidential candidate or president-elect was directly assaulted prior to the Trump assassination attempt. 
• 4 hours, 34 minutes. The approximate length of Tuesday’s House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
• 60. The number of days Cheatle said it will take to complete the Secret Service's internal investigation into the assassination attempt on July 13.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the IRS whistleblowers.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was our YouTube video where Isaac gave his 24 thoughts on Biden dropping out.
• Nothing to do with politics: Pictures of the world’s most elusive bugs.
• Yesterday’s survey: 896 readers answered our survey about the Republican National Convention with 45% discouraged. “I’m optimistic about a lot of the details in the party’s 2024 platform, but from what I saw at the convention, it’s clear the party’s platform is still just whatever Trump says,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Charles Young was the first African American to become a colonel in the Army, and he now has a road in Ohio named in his honor. Young was born in 1864 to enslaved parents in Kentucky, attended West Point, and became its third black graduate. After a long career in the National Park Service, he was promoted to colonel, then posthumously promoted to brigadier general in 2021. On Monday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill to honor Young, designating 85 miles of roadway as the General Charles Young Memorial Historic Corridor. Local 12 has the story.

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