Cheyenne Roche: Why must all women shoulder the blame?

Jul. 25—On Monday, former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was grilled during an hours-long hearing in front of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

She was called to testify on how such a heinous oversight could have been made, allowing former President Donald Trump to be shot in the head on July 13 at his rally in Pennsylvania.

Cheatle called the attempt on Trump's life the Secret Service's "most significant operational failure" in decades. "The Secret Service's solemn mission is to protect our nation's leaders. On July 13th, we failed," she said at the hearing.

Though she was initially adamant she was the right person to lead the Secret Service, she has since resigned her position. There have been several failed assassination attempts since President John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford went through two assassination attempts in California in less than three weeks. The first attempt saw Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was an arm's length away from Ford when she attempted to shoot him with a pistol. She didn't have one in the chamber and was unable to discharge the weapon.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore fired two shots at President Ford with a revolver, both of which missed.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was exiting a hotel in Washington D.C. when an assassination attempt by John Hinckley resulted in Reagan being struck with a ricocheting bullet under the right armpit.

During Cheatle's hearing, Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the Democrats who joined the calls for Cheatle to resign, noted the Secret Service director who presided over the agency when there was an attempted assassination of Reagan later stepped down.

While this is accurate, H. Stuart Knight was the Secret Service director for all three attempts between 1975-1981 and didn't resign for nearly eight months after the Reagan shooting.

I agree with calls for Cheatle's resignation. I applaud our legislators for coming together in a bipartisan hearing to hold our country's leaders accountable. The attack on Trump was avoidable, and Cheatle needs to be held responsible.

But because Cheatle is a woman, she isn't the only one being held accountable. You see, when a woman at the top, especially at the top of a male-dominated field, makes a mistake, it isn't just her that is held accountable — it's all women.

"Ma'am, you are a DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] horror story," Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told Cheatle. He went on to tell Fox News that Cheatle "was a "DEI initiative person" and "this is what happens when you don't put the best players in."

"There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women," conservative political commentator Matt Walsh posted on X the morning after the assassination attempt. "If there's a woman doing a job like this, it 100% means that a more qualified male was passed over."

Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator and U.S. presidential candidate John McCain, reposted Walsh's statement, adding: "The notion that men and women are the same is just absurd. You need to be taller than the candidate to protect them with your body. Why do they have these short women (one who can't holster a gun apparently) guarding Trump? This is embarrassing and dangerous."

Yet in the photo of Trump raising his first, it is a woman standing chest to chest with him, covering his body with her own. Women have been protecting presidents since Abraham Lincoln was in office.

Did Secret Service women at the rally make mistakes? Yes. Did Secret Service men at the rally make mistakes? Yes. Yet, it is women who will be universally blamed for the actions of a few.

Though there has been public outcry denouncing women leading or even in the Secret Service, this never happened to Knight.

Knight led through three assassination attempts, one being a shooter an arm's width from the president, and no one blamed men. In fact, the next seven Secret Service directors were men. None of them shouldered Knight's mistakes.

Cheatle is only the second female Secret Service director. The first was Julia Pierson, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013.

In U.S. history, four sitting presidents were assassinated, one was wounded in an attempt and two were wounded after their term was over. Along with Ford, Andrew Jackson would also have been shot had the gun not misfired. In all instances except for Trump, a man was sitting at the helm of Secret Service.

Our gender does not dictate whether or not we will be a good fit for a position. DEI programs are not designed to give jobs to less-deserving women or people of color. DEI is designed to give everyone a fair shot at a job regardless of these factors.

"Statements blaming this shooting on efforts to promote gender equity are disingenuous at best and deeply dangerous at worst," a group of associations, including Women in Federal Law Enforcement, International Association of Women Police and National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives, said in a statement.

Research, they said, has shown that efforts to expand the pool of qualified applicants for law enforcement positions "makes us all safer and say they do not advocate for hiring solely based on gender or lowering standards in any way."