Trump escapes unharmed as gunman opens fire at White House press dinner hotel

US President Donald Trump and other top US leaders were evacuated from an annual White House correspondents dinner in Washington on Saturday night after a gunman fired several shots at the glitzy, high-profile event. The president, first lady Melania Trump, Vice-President J.D. Vance and cabinet members were uninjured as the event broke up and the first family returned to the White House. A member of the White House press pool reported hearing the shots as Secret Service officers swarmed the banquet hall, their guns drawn, before quickly ushering senior officials and the gathered reporters out of the room. A short while later, the social media-gripped president posted about the incident. “Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job,” Trump recounted. “They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended. “The First Lady, plus the Vice President, and all Cabinet members, are in perfect condition. “The evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again.” At a press conference at the White House a half-hour later, Trump praised the Secret Service and suggested that such threats went with the job. “It’s a dangerous life. I think I handle it as well as it can be handled,” he told correspondents, many still dressed in evening wear. “I’m doing it for the country.” Trump said he was sitting on the stage when he heard the shots and thought it was either a tray falling or a gun going off. “I don’t care how many people you have. If you have a whackjob but they have a brain, but it’s a little distorted, or a lot distorted, they can make trouble,” he said. Trump said an officer was shot but was largely unhurt because of his bulletproof vest. “The vest did the job.” Asked why he thought he had been the target of repeated assassination attempts, Trump said he was in a select group that included the 16th US president Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 to 1865. “The people that do the most, they’re the ones they go after,” he said. “They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much.” He added: “Just look at the names, the big names. I don’t want to say I’m honoured by that, but I’ve done a lot”. The most public incident occurred in July 2024 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving Trump with a bloodied ear. The 20-year-old gunman was killed by Secret Service snipers. Trump said the latest shooting incident showed why his massive controversial White House ballroom project with its improved security needed to be built – a court has halted construction on the project. It also showed why his agenda needed to go forward, he said. “It’s not going to deter me from winning the war in Iran,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do a great job and that’s all we can do.” Trump entered the subterranean banquet hall of the Washington Hilton at around 8.15pm to the strains of “Hail to the Chief”. The shots rang out some 15 minutes later, according to a staff member serving dinner who ran out of the hotel. Reports said that the suspected shooter, later identified by authorities as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, fired several shots before being subdued by security forces. A photograph showed armed officers surrounding a person lying on the ground. Police said the suspect was carrying a shotgun, a handgun and several knives. It was not immediately clear how the lapse in presidential security occurred, particularly involving such a high-profile event. Trump said that the shooter appeared to be a “lone wolf”, adding that law enforcement was already securing warrants to search his home in California and much more would be revealed overnight. “He was fast, he was running full blast,” Trump said. “He was like a blur.” The incident unfolded near the hotel’s security screening area just as guests in tuxedos and gowns were having their first course – a spring pea and burrata salad. The suspect made a break for the hall where he was tackled by several agents. The Hilton hotel, where the dinner has taken place for years, has generally remained open to regular guests during the correspondents’ dinner. Security has typically been focused on the ballroom – rather than the hotel at large – with little screening for people not entering the dinner itself. The gap has sometimes created openings for protests in the foyer and other public spaces, including cases where security removed guests who unfurled banners or staged demonstrations. Washington’s police department advised the public to stay away from the downtown hotel while the inquiries took place. Within a couple of hours, however, guests were allowed to return to their rooms. The president appeared magnanimous at the press conference, praising the media for its early coverage and calling on the nation to join together – messages rarely heard from the partisan leader. It remains to be seen, however, whether his supporters may try to use the attack for political ends. As she fled the building, Kari Lake, the controversial senior adviser to the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America and other platforms, appeared to blame the assembled reporters. “There’s some good people in that room need to do some soul-searching. They have hated on this administration for a long time,” Lake said. “They’ve hated on the American people who voted this administration in three times … There’s a lot of very disturbed people in that room who probably were cheering that on. It makes me sick.” Trump’s attendance at the gathering in Washington for his first time as president is putting his administration’s often-contentious relationship with the press on public display. Given sometimes strained ties, Trump’s speech and reactions were being watched closely at the event hosted by the organisation of reporters that cover him and his administration on a daily basis. Past presidents with a less contentious relationship with the media have generally spoken about the importance of free speech and the First Amendment, adding in some light roasts about prominent individual journalists. Trump, a Republican, did not attend during his first 2017-202 term or the first year of his current term. He did, however, go as a guest in 2011 where he sat in the audience as then US president Barack Obama, a Democrat, joked about the New York real estate developer. Trump also attended as a private citizen in 2015. Past dinners have featured comedians who poked fun at presidents. Trump sometimes bristles at criticism, and this year, the organisers opted to hire mentalist Oz Pearlman as the featured entertainment. Trump’s appearance has rekindled a longer running debate in press circles about the dinner and whether it was poor form for journalists to be seen socialising with the people they cover, which could undercut objectivity. The New York Times, for one, stopped attending the dinner more than a decade ago for that reason. Between berating individual reporters, fighting media organisations such as the Times, The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press in court, filing massive lawsuits and restricting press access to the Pentagon, the administration’s distrust of journalists has been a fixture of Trump’s second term. On the eve of the dinner, nearly 500 retired journalists signed a petition calling on the association “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press”. Additional reporting by Khushboo Razdan

Trump escapes unharmed as gunman opens fire at White House press dinner hotel

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Secret Service swarms Washington Hilton and apprehends suspect; Trump invokes Lincoln after repeated assassination attempts

Secret Service swarms Washington Hilton and apprehends suspect; Trump invokes Lincoln after repeated assassination attempts