Sean Curran leapt to Donald Trump’s side when the then-presidential candidate was shot in the ear during a July campaign rally. He said he was willing to sit in a jail cell with Trump to protect him. Now he’s in charge of the Secret Service and promising to replace DEI hires with qualified and effective agents.
When the image of Trump with blood on his face and his fist raised defiantly as he rose up under the American flag was released, it quickly became an internationally iconic photograph. And right next to Trump in the famous image is Sean Curran. It is most certainly true that the Secret Service had a major failure that July day, but it seems to have created a personal bond between Curran and Trump. It remains to be seen if Curran will address the serious corruption and incompetence within the Secret Service -- if he will be merely masking the problems or enacting change.
Not that Curran is new to the task of guarding Trump. For seven years he has protected the president, and that included being with him for numerous court hearings and now two assassination attempts, service that Curran told CBS News was “life-changing.” Without revealing details of Trump‘s comments during these dramatic situations, Curran affirmed Trump is calm and collected “every single day.”
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The Secret Service did discuss what would happen if Trump were sent to jail. “We had serious conversations about it, and I at one point told him, he and I might be — getting a lot closer,” Curran claimed. “Look, if it came to it, I'd be sitting right next to him. That's how much I care for him. That's how much I felt that he deserved the level of protection that any of our protectees should get. There's nothing I would have not done for him.” We can only hope that will drive Curran to very serious efforts to ensure no more massive security failures. In fact, Curran reportedly urged increased security ahead of the first assassination attempt, but was ignored.
Curran professes to have been profoundly affected by the Butler shooting. “Part of me probably still hasn't processed it. I haven't — from that day to now — I haven't stopped," he told CBS. “I felt like I couldn't let him out of my sight. Not to the point where I'd be overworked, but to a point where I felt like I needed to be with him to ensure that things were done the way I needed them to be done. I didn't want to leave his side. I think he probably didn't want me to leave his side, either.” He isn’t very comfortable with the fame that resulted from his face being in the iconic photo, however.
Curran worked on Barack Obama’s Secret Service detail before joining Trump’s team in 2016. He remembers that he and deputy Matt Piant warned their fellow Secret Service agents that Trump, with his incredibly busy schedule and unique situation, needed a more significant protective detail than SS was willing to grant after 2020. Without stating any names or going into details on the huge failure in Butler that resulted in Trump‘s injury and audience member Corey Comperatore’s death, Curran did admit that leadership is not always in touch anymore with agents on the ground and inexperienced people are likely creating issues. “I understand what people on the ground need,” he insisted.
Curran wants more money for the Secret Service, which seems potentially problematic, but he also recognizes that SS has become infected by wokism. He rejects former director Kimberly Cheatle’s goal of ensuring the Secret Service is 30% female by 2030 (one of the issues in Butler, incidentally, was the apparent incompetence of female agents there). “When you highlight a specific group or person, you are not going to get the best qualified candidates,” he stated. “My only goal is to put the right people on the field and get the best qualified applicants for this job, no matter what the position is and no matter what they look like.”
Interestingly, field agents like Curran are not often chosen to lead the Secret Service, even though they have on-the-ground experience. He says some of his fellow agents don’t approve of his appointment. But he did recently receive a friendly call from Clint Hill, a former Secret Service agent who witnessed the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
And Curran affirmed that Trump, though sometimes disliking restrictions on his activities, has always been very respectful to the Secret Service. “He has always shown respect to not only me, but the division that protected him,” Curran said. “We have a bond, probably for life.”