Secret Service Director

Kimberly Cheatle, Director of the United States Secret Service until mid-2024.

In July 2024 a serious security failure occurred: an attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump (former President and 2024 presidential candidate) at a rally in Pennsylvania, where the Secret Service was criticised for operational failures. Congressional oversight hearings were held; Cheatle testified and was heavily criticised for evasive answers.

“The buck stops here” is famously associated with the presidency (Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk reading “the buck stops here”), meaning ultimate responsibility rests at the top. The song uses that idiom ironically.

This song is a critique of institutional failure, accountability deficit, and the way power in Washington can deflect responsibility. It uses the real-world case of the Secret Service’s failure and its Director’s testimony as a concrete occurrence, but expands into a broader symbolic indictment of federal oversight, secrecy, bureaucracy, and power. The references to guns, DEI (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), and global finance hint at multiple narratives playing out in the public sphere about who/what to blame, and how blame is managed. The tone is disillusioned: “the buck stops here” is revealed as hollow; the expectation of transparency is unmet; trust is dwindling.