The Secret Service apparently isn’t good enough—or just plain isn’t enough—for Donald Trump. Trump is defying all precedent yet again by keeping his private security team even though, when it comes to maintaining his safety, they’re no Secret Service. They may have other benefits, though:
Security officials warn that employing private security personnel heightens risks for the president-elect and his team, as well as for protesters, dozens of whom have alleged racial profiling, undue force or aggression at the hands of Trump’s security, with at least 10 joining a trio of lawsuits now pending against Trump, his campaign or its security.
“It’s playing with fire,” said Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent who worked on President Barack Obama’s protective detail during his 2012 reelection campaign. Having a private security team working events with Secret Service “increases the Service’s liability, it creates greater confusion and it creates greater risk,” Wackrow said.
Sure, but if the trade off for greater risk to Trump is greater likelihood his security detail will rough up some protesters? Talk about a trade off tailor-made to appeal to Trump. Also, the Secret Service probably doesn’t suck up to him and make him feel like a badass in the ways we know Trump needs. Keith Schiller, Trump’s head of security, acts as a gatekeeper and a sounding board. But when it comes to protecting Trump in the heat of the moment:
In March, when a 32-year-old man jumped a barricade and rushed toward the stage as Trump was speaking at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Secret Service agents immediately descended on Trump from opposite sides of the dais, encircling him in a human shield as a handful of other agents tackled the man before he could leap onto the stage. About a second after the first two agents reached Trump, Schiller leapt onto the stage and moved to position himself between the scrum and his boss. [...]
But in law enforcement circles, Schiller’s reaction was panned as too slow and was the subject of disapproving conversation among agents, according to a law enforcement source briefed on the conversations. The source said one agent described Schiller as the “JV trying to keep up in a varsity game.”
Trump’s campaign has spent big bucks on his private security, even increasing spending after the Secret Service should have made the private security completely unnecessary. He’s literally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to be made less safe. (Of course, it’s not clear who’ll be paying for this once Trump’s in the White House.) It’s the creepy affectation of someone who likes the dictator image and accompanying repression of protest way, way too much.