The United States Secret Service may not have a perfect reputation, but there’s one thing the agency won’t tolerate: Being a part of an assassination attempt against the President of the United States, even in a work of fiction.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service told Fox News on Friday that a fictional account of President Donald Trump’s assassination, which appeared in The New York Times, was “outrageous.”
“While we understand this is a work of fiction, the insinuation that the U.S. Secret Service would participate in the assassination of a president is outrageous and an insult to the men and women of this agency,” the spokesperson said “The U.S. Secret Service prides itself on being an apolitical agency with a long and distinguished history of protecting our nation’s elected officials.”
Last week, The New York Times published fictional stories from various authors. The news outlet solicited crime and fiction writers to create Trump/Russia-themed stories for publication. As my editor James Barrett put it at the time, these stories “were almost guaranteed to indulge Russian conspiracy theories and include some sort of scenario that ends up with a dead President of the United States.”
And that’s exactly what happened. One author, Zoe Sharp, wrote what is now referred to as “Trump assassination porn”:
When it was time, he went downstairs, took his place in the lobby before the entourage appeared. The hotel staff had been lined up to see their boss, the president, go by. A few of them applauded. Most did not.
The president didn’t seem to notice. He waved, in his desultory fashion. The Secret Service agents clustered around him, ushered him toward the armored limo idling outside at the curb.
The Russian waited until they were a few steps past before he drew the gun. He sighted on the center of the president’s back, and squeezed the trigger.
The Makarov misfired.
The Secret Service agent at the president’s shoulder heard the click, spun into a crouch. He registered the scene instantly, drawing his own weapon with razor-edge reflexes.
The Russian tasted failure. He closed his eyes and waited to pay the cost.
It did not come.
He opened his eyes. The Secret Service agent stood before him, presenting his Glock, butt first.
“Here,” the agent said politely. “Use mine. …”
This was published just as various Democrats began receiving what may have been non-working pipe bomb-like devices – an attack the media blamed on Trump’s rhetoric. The New York Times, naturally, joined in on this narrative, without looking internally at how publishing a fictional account of Trump’s death might also contribute to a negative political climate or inspire its own assassination attempts.
In a news article published Friday, the Times blamed Trump’s rhetoric for the devices, listing what he has said about each of the recipients and what those recipients had said about him. In each article the news outlet published about the devices, Trump’s rhetoric was included.
And as is obvious, such fictional accounts of the president’s death would never be tolerated by left-leaning media outlets if Barack Obama were president.