Trump thought sound of gunman at journalists’ dinner was tray falling | White House correspondents’ dinner shooting
Donald Trump said he thought the sound of a gunman storming a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night was a falling tray, offering his first statement about what was going through his mind as the incident unfolded.
“That was actually completely shocking to me, and that never changes,” Trump said, speaking of the attempted assassination of him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the second incident that occurred on his golf course in Florida during the 2024 presidential campaign.
“I heard a noise and thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray falling on the floor many times,” he said. “There was a gun and some people realized it very quickly. Some people didn’t. I was watching to see what was going on, I probably should have gotten down a little faster.
“Melania, I think, was very aware of what was going on,” Trump said of his wife, who was among the members of her family most concerned about security even before facing assassination attempts. “I think he caught it right away. He was like, ‘It’s a bad voice.'”
The US President’s statement on his response to the incident came at a hastily held news conference in the White House briefing room, where he was escorted back by a motorcade ahead of other senior cabinet officials who attended the dinner.
When asked why he thought he was constantly the target of assassination attempts, Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and said: “The people who make the biggest impact, they go after them. They don’t go after people who don’t do much, because they like it that way.”
Trump, still wearing his dinner jacket with black tie, was joined at the podium by vice president J.D. Vance, FBI director Kash Patel, acting U.S. attorney general Todd Blanche and secretary of homeland security Markwayne Mullin.
Standing at the side of the room were his wife Melania Trump, secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Dan Scavino, Trump’s longtime aide, squeezed into the briefing room behind them.
Trump had entered the briefing room with a frown and appeared to stand in the doorway as if he was still thinking about what had happened at dinner, then opened his remarks by listing the developments regarding the gunman.
“He was a sick person, a very sick person,” Trump said. “He was running at full speed and they caught him before he could get any further. I was too far away, he wasn’t even close to breaching the ballroom doors. My impression is that he was a lone wolf crazy piece of work.”
Trump said it was too early to know whether the gunman was motivated by political motivations or by the US war against Iran. In a post sent by Trump on social media, he said that the man, shirtless and lying on the ground, was from California and appeared to be working alone.
Trump said the gunman shot at a U.S. Secret Service agent who was saved thanks to his bulletproof vest. While he offered general praise for the agency, he said he thought law enforcement would go to the gunman’s apartment and thought they did a better job than at the Butler rally.
When the incident unfolded, Trump was sitting at a high table in the ballroom of the Washington DC Hilton Hotel, where the dinner had been held for decades, talking to CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang, his wife and president of the reporters’ association.
When gunshots rang out, U.S. Secret Service agents rushed to cover the president’s head and pushed them out of the ballroom. The gunman was captured outside the room, in the lobby area, as other agents moved through the banquet tables to remove other cabinet officials.
Trump also suggested that he might not run for president if Rubio, his rival in the 2016 presidential campaign and now secretary of state and national security adviser, had warned him about the potential for assassination attempts.
“This is a dangerous profession,” Trump joked. “No one told me it was this dangerous. If Marco had told me, maybe I wouldn’t have run. I’ll pass.” Still, he added: “It’s a dangerous profession, but I don’t look at it that way. I’m here to do a job.”
