The right is attacking the Secret Service’s women agents. Trump hasn’t joined in.

Donald Trump and his family are treading carefully around a growing chorus of Republicans blaming the Secret Service’s diversity promotion efforts for last Saturday's assassination attempt on the former president.

While an array of right-wing commentators and some Republican lawmakers have claimed the attack highlights the way DEI policies at the Secret Service have blurred the agency’s focus on its essential mission — specifically calling out the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, and the female agents who helped rush Trump off the stage at the rally — one person who has yet to join in the criticism is Trump himself.

Publicly, he has thanked the agents who were at the rally when the shots rang out and praised members of the security team for shooting the gunman.

“They took him out with one shot right between the eyes,” the former president told the New York Post on Sunday . “They did a fantastic job. ... It’s surreal for all of us.”

While Trump often embraces ideas resonating on the right, doing so this time could pose political risks. In the 2020 election, Trump performed poorly with suburban women who had supported other Republican candidates. Aides hope he can do better with that group this time, and comments that could be seen as disparaging or even scapegoating working women may not help.

Members of Trump’s inner circle have gone further, offering praise for the women agents in particular.

“I know all those agents on stage and they’re the greatest people ever,” Eric Trump said Tuesday on MSNBC, as the network aired photos of the chaotic scene. “The female that’s in the picture, she was with me for a very long time and she’s one of the greatest human beings you would ever meet. I would do anything for her. ... I do not put any of this on them. In fact, I laud them for their courageousness because they could’ve gotten killed, as well.”

In a later interview Wednesday , Eric Trump joined the growing calls on the right for Cheatle to be fired, but continued to vouch for the agents on his father’s detail, including the women.

“They did their job perfectly,” Eric Trump told Fox . “That female on the stage can outshoot all those guys because I’ve seen her do it. ... She would have eaten a bullet for him in a heartbeat. In fact, if I were them I would be infuriated.”

“They’re not covering roofs,” he added. “Something happened on the perimeter.”

Speaking at a POLITICO event at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday, former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien also pushed back against some of the most strident calls to get women out of the Secret Service.

“We don’t want quotas in America, but … the lead of my detail was a female officer. She was amazing,” O’Brien said. “She took good care of me for two years and she was a tough gal and, trust me, she could’ve picked me up and carried me, and she would have beat anyone in a gunfight and I was always happy … she had my six. But, again, she wasn’t a diversity pick. She was a pick because she was the best person for the job.”

Cheatle is scheduled to testify publicly to the House on Monday about the event, in which one rallygoer was also killed and several others injured, and it’s likely the right-wing criticism against her agency’s hiring practices will resurface there.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for her to step down because of the lapses that led to the suspected shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, being able to fire as many as seven shots from a semi-automatic rifle before being shot dead by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

“I think it’s inexcusable,” Johnson said on Fox Wednesday, before adding of Cheatle: “I think she’s shown what her priorities are.”

Johnson didn’t specify what he thought Cheatle was unwisely prioritizing, and his office declined to clarify his remarks. However, since the shooting Saturday, social media has been awash in posts by conservative influencers claiming Cheatle was more focused on diversity than successfully carrying out the Secret Service’s mission.

“DEI results in D-I-E,” Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) said on Fox Tuesday. “This is about meritocracy. It’s not about a quota…. We need to ensure the safety and security of all politicians that are being threatened, and especially when you are talking about President Trump.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) echoed the critique in a bill she filed this week aimed at defunding Cheatle’s salary if she does not step down.

“Under Director Cheatle's failed leadership, the United States Secret Service has prioritized woke DEI policies over the core responsibilities of the Secret Service, including protecting our nation’s leaders,” Boebert said in a statement.

A Secret Service spokesperson declined to comment on those criticisms, but White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre sharply rejected the notion that gender played any role in Saturday’s events and that women can’t be effective as Secret Service agents.

“That’s ridiculous, just to be really clear about that,” Jean-Pierre said at a briefing Monday. “These men and women put their lives on the line. What they are doing is brave. ... We should not discount that, if it’s a man or if it’s a woman.”

One particular vein of criticism is that the women agents who joined the circle around Trump appeared to be shorter than the male ones and that their smaller stature — particularly when trying to shield the 6-foot-3 former president — made them unsuited to be bodyguards.

“Having a small person as body cover for a large man is like an undersized Speedo at the beach — doesn’t cover the subject,” Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote Monday on the X platform he owns .

However, one Secret Service veteran dismissed the idea that height is critical to serving successfully as an agent.

“Few understand all of the factors that influence the selection of young men and women special agents. But height is not one of them,” said Gordon Heddell, who spent 28 years at the Secret Service and retired as an assistant director. "Anyone who says that protection is about having only 6-foot-5 protectors does not understand the business of presidential protection. ... It's a very unfair statement. It's a false premise and it's uninformed.”

Heddell said many prominent male leaders in the Secret Service, including leaders of details for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, were not particularly tall. He said agents need “good street instincts” and are called on to protect a range of individuals, so ranks that are diverse in terms of gender and race are vital.

“Without diversity today, you're done. And I don't mean because of political correctness; I'm talking about practical mission accomplishment reasons. It's essential,” Heddell said.

No evidence has emerged in recent days tying any women agents or the agency's efforts to increase diversity in its workforce to the most obvious lapses in security — such as the failure to secure the building whose rooftop the suspected shooter used to open fire.

Much of the DEI-focused criticism on the right alludes to a CBS News story last year that noted the Secret Service had set a goal of having 30 percent of its recruits be women by 2030.

“I’m very conscious, as I sit in this chair now, of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce — and particularly women,” Cheatle told CBS then.

The 30 percent goal is part of a national drive involving more than 200 law enforcement agencies seeking to boost the number of women in their ranks. So far, 14 federal agencies have joined the effort.

Cheatle spent 25 years in the Secret Service and worked on then-Vice President Joe Biden’s protective detail before leaving in 2019 to oversee security for Pepsico. Biden named her director of the service in 2022, making her the second woman to head the agency.

While acknowledging mistakes in her agency’s handling of the Saturday event where Trump was shot, Cheatle has defended the work of the agents who surrounded him during the attack.

“The people who covered and evacuated the president on that day, the counter sniper — performed their job flawlessly, and I’m very proud of the actions that they took,” the director said on CNN Wednesday .

Jordain Carney contributed to this report .