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Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump raised many pressing questions: Who was behind the attack, what was their motive, and how might this affect the upcoming general election? But for at least one person, anyway, there was a topic missing from the national discourse: Which watches were on the wrists of the US Secret Service agents who flocked to Trump after the gunshots?
That question lands smack dab in the middle of Watches of Espionage’s wheelhouse. WoE is an Instagram account dedicated to cataloging watches involved in military operations or worn by veterans. Some recent posts from the account, whose operator is an anonymous former CIA intelligence operative, include a recounting of what pilots wore on their wrists during D-Day or the watches involved in a recent Counter Assault Team mission in New York. Still, responding to an assassination attempt on a former POTUS with a watch ID was easy joke fodder on social media. “Watch nerds on the ‘gram really are a special species,” one person on X joked with an image of WoE’s post.
For WoE, this was just business as usual. “Whenever there is a global event or national security incident, a watch is involved,” they said in an email. Typically WoE receives images directly through relationships they have with different military units, but the USSS is unique because its members are so often in the public eye and in widely distributed images. According to WoE, the Secret Service “have a deep watch culture with custom ‘unit watches’ from Omega, Tudor, Breitling, and several others.” Which is why, “after getting over the shock of the assassination attempt,” WoE went to work identifying the watch: an Omega Seamaster customized for USSS agents.
WoE understands that the Omega is unimportant in the context of an assassination attempt—but this is precisely the type of event the account is built to cover. Watch media is built on these types of micro obsessions: there are accounts dedicated to single brands, ones that meticulously cover the watches celebrities wear, and others focused on the timepieces owned by characters in television and movies. WoE’s zone of coverage just happened to drop them in the middle of the biggest news story in the world. That’s how you get an image of Trump, ear bloodied just moments after an attempt on his life, and the focus is somehow directed at a watch on an agent’s wrist. “The Omega Seamaster is relatively insignificant and trivial,” they admitted. “That said, at Watches of Espionage, timepieces are our prism for viewing current and historical events. Watches are a common feature in national security incidents and add additional understanding of those involved.”
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