The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains | How Does the Secret Service Work?

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, they’re explaining the United States Secret Service. Check out the interview with the former Secret Service agent Jason references here. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Cru⁠ ⁠Wild Alaskan⁠ ⁠HelloFresh⁠ ⁠Safe House Project⁠ ⁠Gloo⁠ ⁠QAVA⁠ ⁠CCCU⁠ ⁠Filament Bible⁠ ⁠Upside⁠ ⁠Mosh⁠ ⁠LMNT⁠ ⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠ ⁠Bible Gateway Plus⁠ ⁠Life Application Study Bible⁠ ⁠Unto⁠ ⁠TPO Corrections Page⁠

Fair warning. And I'm going to be as vulgar as we can be on, on TPO Explains. Cool. Let's hear it. This job sucks. My hot take in life is I wish steroids were legal. I think they should be legal. What?

There are so many things that are illegal that have no, like, benefit, you know? And steroids have a clear benefit, you know, like muscle mass is good. And I get it for competition. Like if you, that's, those are private organizations. If the NFL says no doping, that's great. That's their prerogative. I'm on board with that. But me, why can't I choose to just get swole I want to?

And I'm not going to break the law. So I'm not going to have them. I'm just saying if I could be on like low level steroids and just make like my, my workouts more effective and it was legal, I'm pretty sure I'd do that. But it's not, it's not reality. It's fine. You can drop in the comments. that I'm horrible and wrong.

You want to hear some people that probably have some high testosterone. Yes, yeah, that's a great segue into today's topic, folks. Today we are going to talk about the Secret Service. Jason's going to teach me a lot because I do not know a lot about the Secret Service. Oh, okay. They've kept it secret from me. Can you blame me for not knowing? That's right.

You know, it's remarkably, there are specifics that are classified, but it's remarkably unsecret. So I'm, I'm, yeah. Let's get started. What do you know about the Secret Service? Okay. In my mind, the Secret Service is the group that protects the, I would say the president. I'm not going to just limit it to the president, though, because I feel like maybe the Secret Service gets involved when there are other high profile individuals that maybe they are already imagining it's a high risk.

environment, so they want to protect and make sure that they have their bases covered. Yeah, so the Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency, and it has two kind of distinct responsibilities. We'll start with the actual first, what came around first, which is to investigate financial crimes. Really? So in 1865, it was founded as a branch of the Treasury Department to combat rampant counterfeiting. This number was wild. After the Civil War, it is estimated that one-third to one-half of all U.S. currency was fake. And good old Abe Lincoln was like, that's a problem. We need to, you know, fix this. Clean it.

So Abraham Lincoln signed the law creating the Secret Service and the same day, in a stroke of huge irony, he is assassinated. So it's a little bit less ironic because the agency that he founded, it was for counterfeiting, but it is the agency that would go on to protect the president in literally the exact same day. No. That he signs it. He goes to the theater and is killed. Wow. Obviously unfortunate events, but that's like poetic.

Yeah. Okay. So that's the first half. and is I think still a very large portion of the Secret Service in terms of people employed by the Secret Service, a large bit of it goes towards financial crimes. Counterfeiting now like cybersecurity of the U.S.'s financial systems, that rolls up to the Secret Service. And then there's the protection side of the Secret Service, which is certainly what everyone thinks of. Yeah.

In all, there's about 8,000 staff. So it's not just like 10 dudes that hang out with the president. With a high level of testosterone. That's right. Yes. 8,000 men and women, some doing, you know, financial crime, some doing protection, a lot of administrative work and stuff like that. Okay.

So 1865, Abe Lincoln found it. It's part of the Treasury Department. Then in 1901, President William McKinley is assassinated. and he was not the first to be assassinated. Right. And finally, Congress was like, this is a problem. We've had, I think at the time, he had had three, at least three presidents assassinated. And they're like, we need, this person needs protection.

So they passed a law. And then in, and that was in 2001. And then in 2003, those are kind of the three big dates. It moved from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security. after 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security was created, and they were like, you know, the Secret Service does a lot of security and doesn't make as much sense to be under the Treasury Department. Interesting.

So who do they protect? Yes. So in my first response, I put, or I said the president for sure, but I wouldn't limit it to the Justice President. So is that right? They protect the president and the vice president. and those are required by law. Those two people cannot decline secret service protection.

They cannot decline secret service protection. No, the president must have secret service protection. And then they, everyone else that I'm about to list can say, yeah, never mind, I don't want. This is, this is too much. I have my own security or whatever. The immediate family of those individuals, so spouses and children of the president and vice president, former presidents and their spouses, unless the spouse gets remarried, then you lose your security detail. Former president for how long?

For life. Definitely. Yep. Former president and their spouse for life. And I believe this was, it was, I think, I think it was Obama signed. It used to be like 25 years for 25 years after leaving office and almost everyone died within that time. Yeah. But Jimmy Carter just kept on living. and I believe it was Obama that extended by executive order said, hey, just keep protecting presidents. And it's not that Jimmy Carter when he was 95 new state secrets necessarily, but it'd be a bad look, you know, if he was assassinated.

So president and their spouse for life. The vice president gets it up to six months out of office, but it can be revoked early. by law, the maximum is six months out of office. So you do not get friends. Yes. Huge difference. And then the families of those people and children of former presidents until they're the age of 16, which is an interesting.

I don't know how much that's. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how much that's come up. But like a former president who has a 10-year-old when they leave office, that child will have secret service protection for six years. visiting foreign heads of state and their spouses when they're traveling with them, major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of the general election,

and then president and vice president elect. Wow. Then there is national special security events. So this is, I looked it up, it's like inaugurations, the Democratic and Republican national conventions, things where they're saying, this is a high-profile political-ish thing, and we want good security there. And then any individual that the president tells them to protect through an executive order, they're part of the executive branch, and they will protect anyone that the president tells them to protect. It doesn't come up much. One example I saw was before leaving office, Barack Obama signed in an executive order extending the protection on his daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Past 16 years old. Yeah, they were over 16. Okay. They should lose it the next day and I don't like that. So I'm going to extend it. So that does not happen frequently at all? We'll get to this, but the Secret Service is kind of famously overworked. And so the premise that, I mean, you can throw a stroke of the pen tell them to protect more,

but there's only so many resources to go around. Okay. So how does the Secret Service actually present? protect. Yeah. What does that mean? Yeah. Okay.

So setting aside the financial crimes, you have the kind of protection portion. So there's the uniformed division. And these are uniformed federal police officers that protect fixed locations like the White House. So there are sub teams. So there's the emergency response team, counter sniper team. And to public knowledge, the only bullet that the counter site sniper team has ever fired was the one that killed Thomas Crooks when he shot then former president and leading candidate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And then you have the canine unit that's detecting explosives and the magnetometer support unit, which is setting up security for events. So if you go to a rally where the president's going to be, you don't just get to walk in. And that's, that's part of the, uh, uniform division. These people look like police officers and they are setting, they're guarding physical locations or securing physical locations. Then you have the special agents, which is what you are envisioning, you know, like the suits, the dark sunglasses, so you can't see their eye, the, the like wired radio into the ear that they're, they're touching. they are protecting people.

So these are the people that are moving with the president. And one of the things, there's this really cool interview that I watched in research for this of a former special agent for the Secret Service who is on the PPD. This is the coveted, the Presidential Protection Division. So this is like, you know, the sitting president, your, you're, you're, protecting them. He was on that division for three U.S. presidents. So I assume he knows what he's talking about. And he was saying that they wear sunglasses so you can't see where their eyes are looking and they wear plain clothes and will sometimes not wear sunglasses to try to be potentially confused for like, hey, maybe that's just another like government official. And you can't

really tell who's security and who's not, and they're just like, I mean, you think they could be, they could be just dressed like police officers or in their own special, very visible Secret Service uniforms. They don't want that. They want to be able to kind of blend in and be somewhat unnoticed as they look through things. Have you ever opened your Bible and thought, man, I really wish I understood this better. We've all been there. The Bible can feel overwhelming when you don't have the right guidance or context around what you're reading. That's why we love Kava, a Christian streaming platform designed to help you understand scripture and live out your faith with confidence. It's like digital discipleship in your pocket.

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that help people around the world grow in their faith. Move from confusion to confidence with Kava. Watch anytime, anywhere from any device and use code the pourover 50 to get 50% off your first six months. Start streaming today at the link in the show notes. I'm about to get into what is, I think, some of the most insane things.

The level of effort that goes into making sure the president of the United States is safe is absolutely mind-boggling. Cool. Let's hear it. So let's imagine that the president is traveling and is going to stay in a hotel. It doesn't happen very often because it's a nightmare, but it has happened, and this is what would happen. Secret Service is going to show up as far in advance as they possibly can, and they're going to do interviews with management and employees. They're going to say anyone who has any criminal history cannot be working on that day, you know?

And then the president would get three full floors of the hotel, the one that he is staying on, the one above and the one below. And Joe, if you had booked a room, your reservation has been canceled. No way. They're going to walk through, hey, this is the route that the president is going to go from the motorcade to his room. And if something happens here, this is where we're going to go. And this is the new alternate route. And if something happens in this stairwell, this is where we're going to go. And we're actually not going to go in this stairwell because there's not a good escape route from it.

And they go through all of this and literally just plan the steps. And this is one stop on one trip that this human being is going on. Jeez. Then the day of, they'll send the canine unit to go in and, you know, sniff things out. Sniff things out. They have agents go and walk through all these, like the route and the contingency route and other stuff. And then they'll just have people stand there.

Like they bring in more agents from like the local field office and they'll, I don't know what it's called. In my mind, it's like standing duty. It's like, hey, we cleared this stairwell. now stand here and make sure that nothing changes about the stairwell. And you know those like guards in England that have like the funny hats and they, you know, you just see clips. So I don't, I don't actually know. But they're always just standing there.

And they don't smile. Expressionless. Yep. Motionless. Perfectly still. No bathroom breaks. Right. So they do all this.

The president stays has a hopefully very uneventful stay and moves on. Okay. that is a crazy level of effort to say, hey, the president's just going to be at the best Western and let's like, you know, make sure it's safe.

But there's more. There's actually more that goes into it. Okay. So, and some of this depends on whether or not it's a, like publicly known they're going to be there as opposed to a pop-in. So something like a campaign event where they're saying,

it's, you know, advertised. The president's going to be here. Way more security. That's like they need the advance. team. They need the advanced time. But there are times when, you know, they're campaigning and they're like, you know, I'm going to pop into this local pizza shop, you know, show I'm a man of the people and eat pizza.

And that, assuming it wasn't announced, that is basically, there's no advanced team. They just go in and do the kind of like day of sweep. And that's where people, I mean, they're totally just like, I don't like you. You don't look right. You just need to leave and stay over here for the next 15 minutes. And they have, they're just clearing the area. and saying, my goal is to make sure nothing happens to this person. Yeah. And, you know, no holds barred. The, and so this, this like kind of the two different levels came up and was in the news somewhat recently because there was the other attempt on Trump's life, Ryan Ruth down in Florida. It was at one of Trump's golf courses.

And he was found hiding in the bushes. with a rifle. And part of what was the controversy around that was they had not secured the entire golf course. But the premise was this wasn't, it wasn't a publicized thing that Trump was going to be there. He decided to play golf at one of his courses. But the problem was it was a Sunday and he had played golf at that course a lot of Sundays. And so it's like he has this rhythm and predictable routine. And it obviously takes a lot more reasonable.

resources and effort to do the whole advanced thing. And so this was just, it was treated as like a pop-in by the president. And so, and also, I will say, those security protocols worked. You know, Ryan Ruth never had line of sight on, on Trump at that time. And, and the Secret Service arrested him, and he was actually just sentenced to life in prison. They take this, they take this very seriously. I see. Yeah. There is someone, there is a secret service agent at the nearest hospital, always. It's like President Trump is going to be in Des Moines. There is a secret service agent at the Des Moines Hospital saying, just in case the president has to show up here, I'm here to save 30 seconds and clear the way, you know.

It's just the level of preparedness is absolutely wild. You got me hyped, Jason, with all that. So, of course, the natural question is, can I get a job with the Secret Service? You said they're overworked and they're doing so much. So like, hey, here I am wanting to help out. How do I get a job? You cannot apply to be on the presidential protection division. Okay.

You apply and are hired to a pipeline that may one day end in you protecting the president. And fair warning. and I'm going to be as vulgar as we can be on on TPO explains. This job sucks. Like, and it just, like, I'm not just subjectively saying this. Yeah. It was working for the Secret Service was ranked 305 out of 305 in 2016 in like job satisfaction at the federal government. That was in, yeah, 2016, they've gotten a little bit better, but they are always in the bottom quartile.

Oh, geez. Because of the things you said, it's excessive hours, very high stress, but also super boring. You know, it's like you need to guard the stairwell vigilantly and just stand here and just sit here and imagine all the worst things that can happen. And there's significant understaffing because the requirements are so high. and at one point there was they were hiring one and 10,000 applicants or one in 10,000 people who applied ended up actually becoming like part of the uniform division or a special agent. They've ramped up hiring in part because the number of people they're protecting has gone up and they've just needed to. Like Trump has a large family. He has a lot of kids. and so they just have more people to protect.

Lots of travel and you don't get to pick where you go. Long hours, high stress, and zero appreciation for, like, if you do your job, you go and if you don't do your job, it's front page news and you're getting, you're testifying before Congress and all that. But if you're convinced that you want to become a Secret Service agent, you must be a U.S. citizen, 21 to 37 years old. There are some exceptions if you're a veteran. You may be able to go a little bit over that 37 age cap, have a valid driver's license, receive a top security, top secret security clearance, which takes a long time. Yeah, and they're thorough.

You need to pass a physical fitness test. You need to pass a polygraph. You have no criminal history. And then you are forced to retire at age 57. You're just put out to pasture. So the 21 to 37 is the range to get in. Yes. But then once you're in, you can continue to serve until you're...

57. Oh, got it. Okay. There's another thing that the Secret Service is doing, which is they, so they have primary jurisdiction in the U.S. over anyone that threatens any of their protectees. So, and they take that, they take that job very seriously. Best I can tell, anyone who publicly threatens the president or vice president will be hearing from the Secret Service, even if it was like quite obviously a joke.

and I was thinking, like, as I'm going through researching this event, my Google search history feels very incriminating, you know, of like, well, what happens if someone does this to the president? Or can you say this about the president? They really want to make sure this person is safe. And anyone that has indicated that they don't like this person and are willing to actually threaten them is going to get a call. You're talking about public threats? Like, are we, in my mind, like a Facebook post? Is that what we're talking about, too? that person will reasonably hear from the Secret Service.

Wow. And it's like if you are, if you are criticizing their political stances or saying they're dumb and shouldn't, all that is fair game. But if you are suggesting that you want to or they should be kidnapped or killed or something like that. And post that on Facebook. Post that publicly. Say it on a podcast.

Yeah. So don't clip this. The goal is they're following up with all those people in establishing this is not allowed. Wow. And do you remember? So Kathy Griffin, she's a comedian. And in 20, I think it was 2017, she posted a picture of her like holding a severed head of Donald Trump and it had like catch up his blood. And, you know, it was clearly a political statement.

she has said that she was thoroughly contacted by the Secret Service. She was put on a no-fly list for two months. And then even after she was allowed to fly again, and this was an interview in like 2019 or 2020, so who knows how it has changed since then. But she said every single airport, including international airports, she was stopped and questioned and more thoroughly.

She's like, I was in London and like I was pulled aside, more thoroughly searched and interviewed all because she posted this video threatening the sitting president. No way. Wow. Okay. Yep. Definitely take it seriously. Yes. Well, should we move on to fun facts? Yes. There's a host of fun facts. I'll keep it, I'll keep it rather light. Okay. First, the Secret Service has an international, the international ink library.

And this, I think, goes back to their counterfeiting things. But, okay, I'm holding a pilot G2 pen. They know they could look at the ink and say, oh, that ink that I wrote came from a pilot G2 pen. Wow. And that pen was released on such and such date and what. whatever. So they use this for like forgeries and authenticating things of saying, oh, this person said they signed the contract, but we can tell it was with a Bick pen. And Bick didn't create that type of pen until, you know, three years later. So they have this huge ink library with their goal and

what they claim is that like any ink on the planet they have and has been cataloged. And it's apparently a standing request from like the Secret Service Inc. Library people that whenever the agents travel abroad, that they just gather pens and like confirm like, yeah, we have the sink, we have the sink, we have the sink. Did they disclose where this is located? You know, it's, I think it's digital, like digitized now where they've, there's like a chemical test and you can see like how the ink responds and then that you can you can then validate that against the digital thing. So I don't, if you're trying to sabotage the ink library.

No, I kind of want to like take a tour, you know? Sure. It's in the cloud now, though. Dang. All right. The agent training, so this came from that YouTube video of the Secret Service agent. He said that a surprising amount of the training, the like active, you know, situation training is, involves being shot at by paintballs and that they are like going through.

through these things, these scenarios of like, okay, here's the protectee, move them, or, you know, situations happen. And the instructors that are training them are just sitting around with paintball guns, just pelting these like trainees, getting them to one, like, be comfortable with the idea that there are, you know, bullets or projectiles coming at you and correcting for common mistakes. It's like, you dummy, you stuck your head up over the most obvious thing. and yeah, I'm going to put paint on your face. And then also they spend a lot of time just being around gunfire

and hearing different types of weapons being fired so that they can quickly identify like, oh, that was this type of sniper. That's the type of threat we're facing as opposed to like this was a this type of pistol. And I can just, I hear the gunfire and I know. and if it's a sniper, I'm responding differently than if it's someone with a pistol. They're just constantly thinking, worst day, worst case scenario, what do we do? Yeah, I'd be a terrible Secret Service agent. It's like special agents and spies and stuff and those movies are so cool.

I realize at a young age, I'm not cut out for it because, I mean, Hannah will ask me, it's like, well, oh, you met this person, well, like, what were they wearing? I have no idea. What color hair did they have? No idea, you know? So, yeah, I'm not observant and not the attention to detail threat assessment. And I'm not worst case scenario thinker. And then the last thing that's fun.

So the, well, there are a lot of fun, amazing stories and just things that they do. But the Secret Service is who drives the presidential limousine called the Beast. Have you seen, can you envision this? It's actually called the Beast? It's not by the Secret Service, but by everyone, best I can tell, by everyone other than the Secret Service, it's called The Beast. So this guy, again, was talking about he drove the limousine. And it used to be, I'm pretty sure prior to 2001, it used to be a off-the-line Cadillac. So like they just took a Cadillac and then cut it in half and stretched it and added tons of armor and all.

all this capability and stuff. And he said, the problem was, it's like, when you added tens of thousands of pounds to this thing, like, it had issues all the time. The acceleration was horrible. You couldn't stop it. He's like, the first time I was driving it, I pedal to the floor on the brake and it took, like I way overshot where I was trying to stop because it's just a tank, but you just have, you know, like your Cadillac brakes, you know?

And so then after 2001, it's now a bespoke vehicle created for the president. And he said, it used to be a Cadillac that they, you know, put a tank around. And it's now a tank that they've like slapped a Cadillac logo on. And he's like, this thing is, you know, it can accelerate. It's still slow. It weighs like 20,000 pounds. It's still, the acceleration is not great but much better. the brakes are better, the tires don't pop like every day.

Good. And the exact capabilities of it are classified, but just looking at pictures of, like, the door, it looks like a airplane door. Like, this thing is so massively thick. Heavy duty. Yes. And it can for sure stop a bullet. It is for sure airtight, so any, like, airborne or chemical attack safe.

and also has all this redundant communication device or capabilities so they can do that. And then the rumors about what it can do are pretty wild, you know, that it can like barely skip a bead as it drives over a landmine and stuff like that. There are multiple of these vehicles. And they, the president, when he is in a car, he is in Cadillac One. and if he's driving around London, they have just flown on a cargo, in a military cargo plane, they have flown this massive limousy. No way. To be there so that when he steps off Air Force One, he steps.

That's the vehicle he gets into. And so that's true anywhere they fly, you know, if President Trump is going down to Mar-a-Lago, maybe they just keep one there. But, yeah, it's like this vehicle. travels around. Those are some really fun facts. Yes. Very, very secure person. Oh, the last thing about the beast. Yeah. It just takes regular gasoline and there is no gas station at the White House. So if you are in D.C. and you see what appears to be Secret Service agents filling up the beast at the local BP.

That is probably real. The president is not in there, or that was a, you know, someone messed up big time and didn't fill up the tank. But it does, you just take it to the local gas station and put the gas in. Love it. All right. How about Christian perspective? Yeah.

So we talked about worst day, worst case scenario. And it was just remarkable thinking through how much time is, spent thinking through any possible thing that could go wrong and having practically an unlimited budget to say, we're just, we're going to take every possible step to protect this person and create safety. And the reality that like there's still risk. And there are things like, this person is still likely going or has been shot at, you know, and it's, it's, it's, still an unsafe environment. And also, they may get sick or there are just things that aren't preventable. And this person that's so protected will die of old age, you know, or will. And so

this idea that even the most effort towards safety and security is extremely imperfect. And, but our, our eternity can be perfectly secure. And, and thinking through like, the beauty of, of the gospel and the beauty of what is promised to us is that we don't need to fear when things go wrong because even when they go wrong, even worse day, our eternity is still secure. And that is because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Wow. Amen. Amen. What a great word. Great way to end it. Well, Jason, you taught me a lot. Secret service. Yeah. Thank you. The not-so secret service now, you know?

The exposed. All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us on another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.

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