Trump’s Secret Service agents often go maskless

Fears that president could be left vulnerable to contracting coronavirus a second time

The Secret Service agents tasked with protecting the president are leaving him vulnerable to the coronavirus by regularly declining to wear masks, going against CDC best practices to stop the virus, which infected the president earlier this month.

ABC News analysed videos and photos of his security detail since the pandemic and found that agents close to President Trump regularly weren’t wearing masks. Meanwhile, those surrounding Democratic nominee Joe Biden usually were, mirroring the respective pandemic philosophies of their bosses.

“I don't wear masks like him,” the president said during the first presidential debate, nodding to Mr Biden. “Every time you see him he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away, and he shows up with biggest mask I've ever seen,” he said.

The analysis cited maskless agents at the now-infamous White House Rose Garden ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Two agents tested positive in June as part of an advance team sent to Tulsa ahead of a Trump campaign rally.

"The Secret Service continues to follow CDC guidelines regarding the use of PPE,” a spokesperson told ABC News. “While we continually assess the environment in which we conduct our protective operations, we will not discuss the manner in which we conduct them."

Current and former agents criticised the president earlier this month when he drove by supporters and waved in a sealed, armoured SUV with Secret Service agents while still in the hospital for coronavirus.

“That should never have happened," a current Secret Service agent on Mr Trump’s detail told CNN after the drive-by. "The frustration with how we're treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We're not disposable."

Former agents criticised the president as well.

"Given the president's Covid-19 infection, this was a gratuitous and dangerous political exercise that needlessly exposed his Secret Service agents – as well as their families – to the potentially deadly novel coronavirus," Joseph Petro, a former agent, wrote in The Washington Post.