Secret Service leaders say threats against full-time protectees are up more than 40% from last year, pointing to social media and a mental health crisis as the main drivers.
Fox News Digital reported that Secret Service Director Sean Curran and Deputy Director Matt Quinn sat for a joint interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” where they described a sharp rise in threats against the presidency and the agents charged with stopping them.
Curran did not soft-pedal the numbers. He said the agency is dealing with a level of danger it has not faced before.
“It’s like we’ve never seen before,” Curran said. “The threats on our full-time protectees are up just over 40% than they were last year. That’s a massive increase.”
"It’s like we’ve never seen before. The threats on our full-time protectees are up just over 40% than they were last year. That’s a massive increase."
That figure covers the people the Secret Service is sworn to protect around the clock. It comes after a year already marked by assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, including the 2024 rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Curran served as the lead agent on Trump’s detail.
Host Norah O’Donnell pressed the obvious political angle. She called Trump one of the most polarizing figures in American history and asked whether that status was driving the surge.
Curran refused the partisan frame. He said the Secret Service does not sort threats by left or right, and he pointed instead to technology and culture.
“We are an apolitical organization. We’re here to protect who we’re sworn to protect,” Curran said. “The world is different than what it was 20 years ago. You know, social media changes people.”
"We are an apolitical organization. We’re here to protect who we’re sworn to protect. The world is different than what it was 20 years ago. You know, social media changes people."
Quinn went further on root causes. He said both sides of the aisle produce people who love or hate any president. The bigger problem, he argued, is mental illness and people being driven past the breaking point.
"Look, I would say there’s people on both sides of the aisle that either love or hate any president. I think the biggest factor we’re dealing with today is mental health issues for sure. And more people are being pushed over the edge in either direction."
That diagnosis matches a pattern conservatives have flagged for years: online rage, untreated mental illness, and a culture that glamorizes political violence. Federal cases keep underscoring the point, including when federal agents arrested a podcaster accused of threatening to kill the president.
Curran and Quinn also made clear they do not “weigh” threats as left-wing or right-wing. Assassination attempts and events such as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot sit on the same operational board. The mission is protection, not scorekeeping.
The interview turned to hard protective choices. Reports in August described an Air Force One plane switch involving Trump’s travel. Critics focused on agents and staff left behind on a decoy aircraft. Quinn did not apologize for the hierarchy.
"When you’re operating in any protective detail with the president of the United States, for any president, the priority is the president. Everyone else, staff, agents, media, personnel involved are not the priority, including our own personnel. As hard as that may be for some to understand, the mission is to protect the president of the United States."
Curran added that the maneuver was not new, and he wished it had not been publicized because publicity burns a tactic the agency may need again.
“Look, that’s not the first time we’ve done that. We wish that wasn’t reported, ‘cause that takes some of our tactics away from being able to do something similar again,” he said.
Those comments land against a backdrop of internal discipline. In August, three Secret Service officials were placed on leave, and separate reporting has covered a leak probe that led to suspensions as Iranian threats also targeted the Trump family.
The 2024 Butler rally attempt remains unfinished business for the agency and for the public. Curran’s own role that day puts him at the center of both the threat picture and the after-action scrutiny. A GAO report later detailed policy failures and missed warnings before that attack, keeping pressure on the service’s planning and communications.
Transparency has been another fight. Judicial Watch sued the Department of Justice for records tied to the Butler investigation. Organization president Thomas Fitton said the FBI’s processing pace would stretch the release over more than a decade.
"They are telling us that, at current processing rates, the process will take 12 years. Under the FBI’s timeline, we won’t even be able to challenge what they withheld until 12 years from now. That is obviously unacceptable, and I would like to know what leadership at the FBI and DOJ think about that position."
If that timeline holds, voters and Congress would wait until long after the next several election cycles to see what the government still holds back. That is a accountability problem layered on top of a security problem.
Related personnel issues have not helped public confidence. Separate cases have included a Vance detail agent suspended over alleged leaks of travel and security information, another reminder that insider discipline is part of the protective mission.
Curran’s message was blunt: the threat environment has changed, the internet amplifies it, and mental health failures feed it. Quinn’s message was just as plain: the president comes first, full stop.
Fox News Digital sought White House comment; no response was reported in the piece. What was reported is the operational reality the Secret Service now describes in public, more threats, harder choices, and less patience for turning protection into a partisan argument.
Modern protection also depends on technology and secure systems. Even outside the presidential detail, recent cases such as a stolen surveillance camera cracked open by hackers show how quickly security tools can become liabilities when they fall into the wrong hands.
Curran and Quinn are not asking the country to like every tactic. They are saying the volume of danger is up more than 40%, the causes are cultural and clinical as much as political, and the job remains the same: keep the protectees alive.
A nation that shrugs at a 40% spike in threats, slow-walks the Butler files, and treats mental collapse as someone else’s problem should not act surprised when the next plot gets closer than the last.
