Ahead of this year’s White House correspondents’ dinner, conversations centered on the role of the media and freedom of the press as journalists prepared to dine with the president.
Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence.
A man was apprehended at the Washington Hilton – the same hotel where then president Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. The shooter was outside the ballroom that held the president and various cabinet officials, and thousands of members of the media. Donald Trump described him as a “lone” gunman, though details on the man and his motives aren’t yet clear.
Trump has been the target of two prior assassination attempts, including one in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a man attending a Trump rally was killed. Charlie Kirk, a rightwing commentator, was killed while speaking at an event at a Utah university. Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed by a gunman at their Minnesota home in what has been called a political assassination. Elected officials report frequent threats against their lives. More states have passed laws to allow officials to use campaign funds for security, noting the ongoing rise in targeted violence.
Shortly after the sounds of gunshots were heard on Saturday night, journalists and their guests had flipped over chairs and hid under tables in their tuxedos and gowns, asking each other what had happened and making calls to loved ones. Then the Secret Service and security cleared the president and top officials from the room, and security yelled that people should leave the ballroom, though others remained inside, the message not extending to the entire ballroom.
Even so, initially the correspondents’ association said it intended to continue the event. The idea that the show would go on – that people would come out from hiding under tables in a tux after a shooting – struck a chord about the regularity of gun violence in American life.
“Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen,” one commentator on Bluesky wrote after the correspondents dinner. Another account responded: “Well, in fairness, that’s what we ask of school kids.”
Eventually the dinner was pronounced done and would be rescheduled.
The president instead held a press conference to share minimal details on what happened, and vowed to hold a makeup event soon that wouldn’t be as harsh on the media as he intended to be on Saturday.
Trump was asked about the rise in political violence in the US.
“It’s a dangerous profession,” Trump said of being a politician in the US. The job of president was statistically more dangerous than being a racecar driver or a bullfighter, he said. “If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn’t have run,” he said, referencing Marco Rubio, his secretary of state who was one of his rivals for the 2016 Republican nomination.
“It is a bit surprising because this is supposed to be the most secure place in Washington DC with cabinet members, president, vice-president, everybody here. So this is the most secure place,” said Marcin Wrona, a US correspondent for TVN Poland who was sitting close to the incident. “Yes, there are tensions. Yes, we had attempts on President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in Florida. Am I very surprised? Unfortunately not.”
Regardless of security, the fact that political violence has become a feature of American life, rather than an outlier, rang true on a night meant to celebrate the freedom of the press.
David Smith contributed reporting
