What happened inside the ballroom when a gunman tried to breach Trump's night with the press
The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is one of Washington’s enduring, if somewhat awkward, rituals.
There is inherent tension in the room, with journalists dressed in finery sharing drinks and food with many of the subjects they cover. That friction was starkly evident this year given President Donald Trump’s often contentious relationship with the media.
That ritual was wildly upended Saturday night when a gunman charged the premises, trying to penetrate the hotel ballroom where Trump and Cabinet secretaries were assembled. They were spirited out unharmed and the crowd of 2,300 hunkered down in gasps, confusion, broken plates and spilled wine.
Wait, was that the sound of a gunshot? Trump wondered. Or did some waiter just drop a tray? “I was hoping it was a tray,” Trump said. “But it wasn’t.”
Oz Pearlman, the mentalist enlisted as the evening’s entertainer, was performing a magic trick for Trump on stage as shots rang out outside the ballroom, he told The Associated Press, which had two dozen journalists there.
Trump had boycotted previous dinners as president. It was apparent, going into the dinner, that he had things he wanted to say about the media coverage he seems to revile even as it supplies him with oxygen. “I was really ready to rip it,” he said later at the White House.
In cocktail receptions before the dinner, attendees speculated about who would face Trump’s ire and whether he would stick around for the presentation of journalism awards, including a prize for Wall Street Journal reporters who spotlighted Trump’s relationship with disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
All of that was on plenty of minds as the audience started on spring pea and burrata salad and waiters prepared to serve a main course starring prime chateaubriand and Maine lobster.
A shout of ‘shots fired’
The atmosphere then took a dramatic, fearful turn.
Those seated closest to the doors were the first to respond as security officials shouted “Shots fired.” People ducked under tables and chairs, knocking over table settings.
“I heard a pop, but we didn’t know what the hell it was,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. “And then you heard all sorts of things clatter. Then the Secret Service and every detail came flooding in and everybody went down. I took a knee. … I didn’t go under the table.”
The commotion spread almost as a wave toward the stage. For a few moments it appeared as though Trump was a spectator to the disarray, before he, too, was whisked away by his security detail.
As Trump told it, his wife “knew immediately what happened,” while he did not. Melania Trump told him “that’s a bad noise,” he said later.
