Poll: Americans are dissatisfied with the Secret Service after Trump's shooting

Following the assassination attempt in July that injured former President Donald Trump, Americans' antipathy toward the Secret Service has grown, according to an opinion poll released Monday by the market research institute Gallup.

The survey shows that the share of Americans who rate the performance of the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting presidential candidates and government officials, as good or excellent, fell by 23 percentage points, while the share of those who rate the Secret Service's performance as poor rose by the same amount.

The findings were released as lawmakers and state investigators noted the agency's failure to stop a gunman who climbed onto a roof and shot Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing Trump's ear, wounding two other people and killing one rally-goer.

The polling took place almost entirely before the Secret Service foiled a potential attempt on the former president's life on September 15, this time at the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County, Florida. In that case, a Secret Service agent spotted an armed man on the club's grounds and opened fire. No one was injured and the suspect was taken into custody.

Gallup said the poll stands in sharp contrast to many previous surveys over the past decade asking Americans to rate the performance of federal agencies. The Secret Service has typically enjoyed generally positive ratings from the public, although approval dropped in 2014 after several security breaches, including an intruder who breached the White House fence.

It is the largest decline by any federal agency in this regular survey since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's popularity ratings fell 24 percentage points between 2019 and 2021, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Only the US Postal Service is rated positively by adults in the US, according to Gallup. Approval for other agencies such as the Department of Justice, the Food and Drug Administration and the IRS is similarly low: Less than 35 percent of Americans rate their services as good or excellent.

The Gallup poll found that the Secret Service's positive ratings among Republicans and independent voters who lean toward the GOP have fallen sharply: by 20 percentage points since last year, their lowest rating yet. The approval ratings among Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic also fell by 18 percentage points from 2023.

The pollsters surveyed 1,007 randomly selected adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia from September 3 to 15. Gallup calculated the margin of error at plus or minus four percentage points.

An internal Secret Service investigation released last week found that the agency was responsible for a series of failures leading up to the July 13 shooting, including failing to instruct local police snipers to secure the roof and spot the gunman using a drone in the area hours before the shooting.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, is currently negotiating with Congress to dramatically increase the agency's budget, as well as increase staff and upgrade equipment. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. is urging elected officials to increase funding so the agency can deal with the “new reality.”

A bipartisan House task force investigating the Pennsylvania shooting is scheduled to hold its first hearing on Thursday.

On Sunday, the head of the task force, Representative Jason Crow (D-Colorado), said the Secret Service was “undoubtedly overwhelmed.”

“We are in a threat environment where the threats are at an all-time high,” Crow said on ABC's “This Week.” “We are asking the Secret Service to protect a sitting president and then two presidential candidates and then former presidents and all of their families in an environment where the threats are three to four times higher.”