John Oliver roasts the Secret Service for training on Tyler Perry sets and ignoring security basics, warning that the agency is actively reckless
Doing more with less.
The Secret Service is currently facing a massive crisis that goes far beyond simple staffing shortages. According to The Guardian, late-night host John Oliver recently highlighted how the agency is operating under conditions that he describes as actively reckless. It is a troubling look at an organization that is clearly struggling to keep up with its own massive workload. The agency is now staring down the barrel of 2028, a year that some agents are already calling Armageddon.
During the Last Week Tonight segment, Oliver said the Secret Service will be expected to manage the LA Olympics and Paralympics, the annual United Nations general assembly, and the constant security needs of two presidential candidates plus their families. That is a heavy lift for any group, especially one that has been stretched thin for years. The agency has been leaning into some strange tactics to manage its public image during this difficult period.
They even hired action movie director Michael Bay to create a recruitment ad for the Super Bowl. The ad featured the slogan that protectors are born, not made. It also included a photo from the July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump was shot in the ear.
Using an image of a security failure for a promotional recruitment video is questionable
Oliver noted that it is a bit odd to choose to self-promote using an image of yourself at your lowest. The late-night host explained how the Secret Service started with a completely different mission. Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation to create the agency just hours before he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre. Back then, the primary goal was to crack down on counterfeit paper money.
It was not until the early 20th century that the agency transitioned into the presidential protection role we recognize today. This followed the assassinations of James A. Garfield and William McKinley.
Even with their high-profile protective duties, agents still spend time investigating low-level financial crimes. They handle everything from credit card skimmers to romance scammers across 115 field offices. Oliver compared this to getting into a bad car accident and being saved by TV and radio personality Ryan Seacrest, noting that it is a lot to put on their plate.
The list of people under their protection is massive. It includes the president, the vice-president, former presidents, spouses, visiting foreign heads of state, and major candidates. This requires endless hours of advance work and brutal shifts.
Agents often deal with the heavy psychological burden of being ready to take a bullet for someone. They do this while working under a federal salary cap and frequently putting in overtime hours for free. The agency has adopted an unofficial slogan of doing more with less, but that approach is clearly hitting a breaking point.
Training resources are also shockingly inadequate for such an important job
Instead of having a full-scale replica of the White House for practice, the agency has been using an 80% scale version built as a TV set by filmmaker and producer Tyler Perry in Atlanta. It is hard to imagine how that provides the high-quality training necessary for such a high-stakes environment.
Meanwhile, the workload continues to climb. During the last presidential election, the agency was responsible for 43 individuals around the clock. The Trump family has also taken twelve times more family trips than the Obama family. This puts a massive strain on the limited manpower available to the agency.
The agency has seen a series of inexplicable failures that have increased in frequency since the start of the Obama presidency. Oliver pointed out that threats against the president saw a 400% increase during that time. He noted that if you do not understand why violent threats went up during that transition, you are simply not being honest.
There have been several embarrassing breaches over the years
In 2014, a man managed to scale the White House fence with a knife and entered the building because the front doors were left unlocked. Another low point involved a scandal with a sex worker in Colombia back in 2011. That incident compromised information regarding the president’s whereabouts and hinted at deep cultural issues within the agency.
All of these systemic problems culminated in the events at Butler, Pennsylvania. The list of errors was extensive. Agents failed to secure the building where the shooter was positioned, and they did not drone-proof the area due to a technical glitch and a lack of ethernet cables.
A report found that agents had racked up 1.2 million overtime hours that year, leading to severe burnout and attrition. An independent review concluded that the agency requires fundamental reform to survive. Without those changes, another Butler could happen again.
There is also a strange history of how the Secret Service handles potential threats
In a 2018 documentary, a special agent explained how they once kept tabs on a man who had previously targeted Ronald Reagan. When George W. Bush or Dick Cheney visited Los Angeles, agents would take the man to dinner and a movie to keep him occupied and under observation. This led Oliver to jokingly suggest that the Secret Service likely has a file on him due to his harsh commentary on the current president.
According to HuffPost, he jokingly requested an aisle seat at a Broadway show if they ever wanted to keep tabs on him. “So given that, let me just say I haven’t seen ‘Oh, Mary!’ yet, and I hear great things. Apparently Bowen Yang is in it now. I’m just saying if you want to keep tabs on me the next time Trump’s in New York, I do love an aisle seat.”
While the humor is clear, the underlying message is that the agency is facing a deep cultural crisis. It needs more than just a larger budget to fix these persistent, dangerous issues.
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