En route to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner Saturday evening at the Washington Hilton, President Trump told associates he was excited to deliver his speech, calling it the “hottest ticket in town,” a person familiar with the matter said. He and his advisers had packed his prepared remarks with jokes, including jabs at members of his own cabinet.
Instead of taking the mic as planned, Trump would be whisked offstage by U.S. Secret Service agents after shots rang out near the cavernous ballroom. What was meant to be an evening of celebration devolved into chaos. The shooter hit a law-enforcement officer wearing a bulletproof vest in the chest. The officer has since been released from the hospital.
One moment, around 8:30 p.m. local time, Oz Pearlman was “schmoozing” Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the dinner, guessing the name of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s expected baby, he told The Wall Street Journal.
The next moment, the celebrity mentalist, slated to be the entertainment that evening, was taking cover at the direction of law enforcement.
Pearlman recalled turning his head to see Trump surrounded by members of the Secret Service less than a foot away. “I have a photo of it in my mind,” he said, “just full eye contact.” The mentalist said that he remembers thinking, “‘Oh, no, are we about to die?’”
Trump said later Saturday that he thought a tray had been dropped, but his wife worried it sounded more serious. He told CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday that he didn’t “make it easy for them” when members of the Secret Service moved him to safety. “I wanted to see what was happening,” he said.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was seated near the front of the room, first thought, “someone is causing trouble again,” he said. His next thought was of a president who had already been shot.
Trump was pulled off the stage by law-enforcement officials but appeared to stumble as they moved him. A huddle of agents formed around the president as he was removed. Vice President JD Vance was ushered away in the opposite direction, and others on the stage were directed into the wings quickly.
As law-enforcement agents with guns and helmets positioned on the stage as it was being cleared of guests and agents spread out across the ballroom, standing on tables and holding their weapons, a waitress cried out in Spanish, “I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die in this room.”
Attendees hid under tables and behind chairs. Wine spilled and serving trays clattered to the ground as people screamed and sobbed. Video footage from the event showed senior administration officials and cabinet secretaries, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., crouching down.
After cabinet secretaries were rushed out of the room, a security staffer called for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s wife, Kelly. Once he found her, he pulled her from under a table and took her from the room.
Guests struggled with spotty cellphone service in the brutalist-style hotel’s basement ballroom while trying to call loved ones to let them know they were safe. Journalists attempted to contact their colleagues to dictate stories about the unfolding events. Many attendees stayed in the room.
Around 9 p.m., Trump posted on social media that the “shooter has been apprehended.”
The suspect, identified by authorities as Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., is in custody and expected to be charged on Monday. He faces two charges—using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on federal officers using a dangerous weapon, police officials said.
Besides Trump, five of the top six officials in the presidential line of succession were in attendance: Vance, Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
When Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked whether there was something like designated-survivor planning in effect for the dinner, he didn’t answer directly. He told CBS News: “We will not stop doing things like we did last night in this administration and this man, if one of his goals was to get us to be scared, he failed.”
The shooter was a guest at the Hilton where the dinner was taking place—and had a shotgun, handgun and knives on him, police said. Police haven’t shared a motive, but they said they believe he was working alone. Investigators are trying to examine the contents of the suspect’s cellphone.
Investigators are examining a laptop and a hard drive found in the suspect’s hotel room. People familiar with the investigation said authorities also found in the room a bookbag, a 10-round magazine, two knives, a Metro receipt and a filtered mask.
Trump’s attendance at the dinner, his first as president in either of his two terms, marked an uneasy truce with a press corps his administration had spent years antagonizing.
The Hilton was also the site where President Ronald Reagan was shot after giving a speech there in 1981. The hotel has long been the host of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner.
The annual black-tie event brings together some of the biggest names in journalism and politics. While past presidents had attended, Trump didn’t participate during his first term.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) called for the creation of a bipartisan national commission for political violence following the shooting in Washington. “We should look at social media. We should look at mental-health issues. We should look at language. But we need to do something to bring the temperature down,” he said Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump said Sunday the shooting never would have unfolded in the ballroom he wants to build at the White House. Trump has been in a legal fight over the project. His administration is appealing a federal judge’s decision last month to block construction of the ballroom, slated at the site of the now demolished East Wing.
Blanche said in a post on X Sunday that Trump’s planned White House ballroom must be built. He shared a letter in which the assistant attorney general called on a historical preservation group to drop its lawsuit that seeks to prevent the ballroom’s construction.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) requested a briefing on security from the Secret Service. Comer also held hearings in 2024 after Trump was shot in Butler, Pa., during a campaign rally.
Comer called on Congress to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, which has been in a tenuous position since February, when appropriations lapsed.
Write to Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com
