All eyes are always on the First Family.
So, needless to say, safety is of the utmost importance. Which is where the Secret Service come in, of course. While Americans are casting their ballots in the 2024 presidential election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the agency is preparing code names for the elected officials.
For nearly 80 years, U.S. presidents and their families have been given nicknames by the agency, which embody their personalities. While the Secret Service first began using codes in 1945 for security reasons when electronic communication couldn’t be encrypted, it’s still used today for clarity.
“Over time, the protectees have almost taken on the persona of the call sign that they had selected,” former Secret Service special agent Jonathan Wackrow told CNN in 2020. “With former President Barack Obama, ‘Renegade’ is a great example: How he went against the establishment in some of the things that he had done, and like Barbara Bush, whose call sign was ‘Tranquility,’ embodied the tranquility and peacefulness in a time of war.”
