What was supposed to be a buttoned up Washington tradition turned into pure pandemonium Saturday night when shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, sending President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and a heavily pregnant Karoline Leavitt diving off the stage as Secret Service swarmed the room.
The dinner was being held at its usual home, the Washington Hilton in D.C., and had only just gotten started. CBS News reporter and WHCA president Weijia Jiang had wrapped her welcome speech, guests had been invited to sit down, and Trump had been on stage no more than five minutes when, according to multiple witnesses inside the ballroom, the room erupted with the sound of gunfire. Townhall’s Katie Pavlich, who was inside, said she heard about five pops in quick succession. Deadline’s Ted Johnson said he counted four and that the sound came from the hallway just outside the ballroom near his table.
What happened next moved at lightning speed. Secret Service agents rushed the stage, snatched the President, the First Lady, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, Karoline Leavitt, mentalist and emcee Oz Pearlman, and Weijia Jiang straight off the platform and out of the ballroom. Heavily armed agents with rifles were on stage within seconds. The entire scene played out on C SPAN’s live cameras for the world to watch in real time. Inside the room, guests dropped to the floor and crouched under tables on Secret Service orders while shouting could be heard in the background, with at least one person yelling “USA” and “God bless America” over and over.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, reporting by phone, was first to confirm that the shooter was dead. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s security detail told CNN live on air that a shooter was in the lobby of the Hilton and had been taken out. TMZ also reported the shooter was killed, presumably by a Secret Service agent. The White House pool report from Jeff Mordock of the Washington Times added another wrinkle, noting that Secret Service was overheard saying an alleged shooter was in custody, raising the possibility of a second suspect. As of right now, it is still unclear whether the shooter actually got a shot off or whether the pops heard inside the ballroom were Secret Service neutralizing the threat in the lobby.
The timing of all this is loud on its own. This was Trump’s first White House Correspondents’ Dinner as President. He skipped every single one during his first term and the first year of his second, and his attendance Saturday was already the most talked about storyline of the weekend. On the eve of the dinner, nearly 500 retired journalists had signed an open letter calling on the WHCA to forcefully push back against Trump’s pressure on the press. Stephen Colbert and HuffPost had publicly skipped the event in protest. CNN’s Jake Tapper had been promoting a “freedom of the press” pocket square he planned to wear. Now all of that is a footnote next to what just happened inside the Hilton.
No injuries to attendees have been reported at this time, and there has been no official word yet on the shooter’s identity, motive, or how a weapon made it into one of the most heavily secured rooms in America on a night the President of the United States was sitting in it. The FBI, Secret Service, and D.C. Metro Police are expected to brief shortly.
This is a developing story. We’re updating as more information comes in.
