CBS journalist Weijia Jiang gets props for poise under pressure after press dinner shooting

• CBS senior correspondent Weijia Jiang is being praised for her composure on Saturday night.

• Jiang was sitting next to Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when gunshots rang out.

• He was later seen in the front row of the White House briefing room as the news was being made.

CBS’s Weijia Jiang is being praised for her poise under pressure during the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The network’s senior White House correspondent is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which hosts the annual dinner. He was sitting on stage next to President Donald Trump chaos broke out in the Washington Hilton ballroom after gunshots were heard.

Jiang then sat in the front row in the briefing room and asked the first question when Trump took questions from the media.

“I arrived at WH with President Trump, who was preparing for a press conference to brief reporters,” Jiang said on X before the briefing. “We hope to have more answers soon. A few of us are waiting in the briefing room. Thank God he, the First Lady, and everyone involved with WHCD were safe.”

“This troublemaker went from moderating the dinner to moderating questions from the briefing room. @weijia CBS News’ White House producer Kristin Brown shared on X: “You are simply the best.”

“And on my way from the ballroom to the briefing room, I call the CBS special!” Oklahoma State University media professor Dylan McLemore wrote about X.

McLemore had previously reported that he “watched Jiang call in from the scene”; This may explain why CBS provides a wider network window compared to its peers.

CBS executives praised the quick response of Jiang and his colleagues in a staff memo shared online.

CBS’s Bari Weiss and Tom Cibrowski wrote Saturday night: “We are so proud of our Weijia Jiang who has taken such care over what should have been a beautiful evening over the past few months. She handled the entire situation with grace and calmness and went straight from the podium to the White House lawn where she is now reporting.”

Most of the journalists at the White House press conference appeared to have arrived from dinner wearing black ties.

“Absolutely the best moment #WHCD Minister @Weijianeatly dressed, balancing at god level, asks the first question @POTUS after the shooting event,” Florida Politics publisher and editor Peter Schorsch wrote in X.

Jiang won praise online for his remarkable composure; this determination became particularly remarkable given how quickly the evening descended into chaos.

Just after 8:30 p.m., shortly after Trump attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for the first time as U.S. president, a person broke down the event’s main gate. In a security video that Trump posted on Truth Social, the officers in the video are seen trying to apprehend the man, then draw their guns and point them at him.

Inside, shouting at the front of the stage gave way to scuffles and chaos as people began running, guests threw themselves on the floor and hid under tables, according to Tim Röhn, senior editor of Axel Springer Global Correspondents Network, who attended the event. Business Insider is part of the network.

As the Secret Service escorted Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance off the stage, heavily armed police emerged from behind the curtains and pointed their rifles at the crowd.

A lull was soon seen in the video feeds from the event room as attendees appeared confused.

Shortly after the incident, Jiang took the stage and said that the night’s program would continue. She later addressed the crowd again, saying law enforcement had requested that everyone leave the premises “consistent with protocol,” and that Trump would hold a press conference shortly, addressing the night’s events.

From there he went to the press conference.

Jiang’s rapid return to reporting became a striking visual of the evening; It was a reminder that in Washington, even the most choreographed events can turn into breaking news with no warning.

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