A gunman storms Donald Trump’s dinner with the press

THE WHITE HOUSE correspondents’ dinner is normally an occasion for the capital press corps to schmooze, booze and back-slap with their sources and subjects. Once a year cabinet officials and correspondents make nice at the Washington Hilton while the president gets filleted by a comedian. That has never accurately described the event with Donald Trump in office. He has previously skipped it as president out of reciprocated loathing for the journalists who cover him. His appearance on April 25th promised a detente of sorts—only for it, too, to be thrown off course, this time by gunshots.

Speeches had yet to start when the sound of gunfire rang out from outside the ballroom where Mr Trump, the First Lady, cabinet secretaries and hundreds of reporters sat with their burrata salads. The president, unharmed, was whisked off the dais. Police tackled the gunman as he ran past a security checkpoint and before he could enter the ballroom. “He started running from 50 yards, and he was fast—he was like a blur,” recounted Mr Trump later that night from the safety of the White House. “They didn’t let him get through. They drew those guns so fast.” A Secret Service officer was shot, but not fatally.

Authorities took the gunman into custody and identified him as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old from California. His motivation is as yet unclear. When he appears in court on Monday he will be charged with several felonies, including assault of a federal officer. “My impression is that he was a lone wolf, a whack job,” offered Mr Trump. Asked if he was the intended target, the president said, “I guess. I mean, these people are crazy.” Mr Trump has already survived two assassination attempts, including a near-miss at a campaign rally in 2024 when a bullet grazed his ear. Over the past year America has seen a spate of political attacks—among them, the murder of Charlie Kirk, a Republican political activist, and Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota.

At the Hilton, which was also the site of an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, reporters ducked, covered and waited for word of the president’s condition. Eventually they made for the exits, pocketing champagne bottles as they went. No one could quite believe what had happened, a chaotic situation made worse by spotty phone reception in the Hilton’s basement ballroom.

The incident will revive questions about the competence of the Secret Service and the adequacy of its security protocols. Officials said they believed the Hilton gunman was a guest at the hotel. Security there seemed surprisingly lax. To enter the lobby one had only to flash a ticket. Those attending did not have to go through a metal detector until just before the ballroom entrance. Mr Trump said the incident underscored the reason for his big new ballroom project in the old East Wing: “I don’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House…It’s drone-proof, it’s bullet-proof glass. We need the ballroom.”

After the first attempt on his life, Mr Trump would narrate his own experience for rapt audiences wherever he went: they wanted to hear about his fortune and fortitude, and he was glad to oblige, still struck by it all himself. This impulse returned after the correspondents’ dinner. On Truth Social, Mr Trump posted photos of the gunman, prone and handcuffed, and CCTV footage of the moment before his capture. At a press conference at the White House, he complimented law enforcement (“The reaction time was great”) and the crowd for its “tremendous amount of love and coming-together”. “Madame chairman, I just want to say you’ve done a fantastic job,” he told the head of the press club, with the relief and goodwill of someone who has just survived a fright with someone else. “What a beautiful evening.” Then he promised to appear at a re-do within 30 days.■