‘Sense of disbelief’: how White House press dinner attack unfolded – The Latest
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What happened during the White House Correspondents Gala?
This is The Guardian.
The biggest thing I remember was just being utterly confused and that sense of commotion. Trump, seizing this moment for his own political advantage, turned this into an advert for his $400 million ballroom at the White House.
I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have The ballroom, that's why Secret Service, that's why the military are demanding it.
What journalists experienced on Saturday nights is frankly what millions of Americans have in town halls, in churches, even in schools. Political violence does remain in America a real characteristic of the Trump era.
The shooting at the White House Correspondents Gala in Washington over the weekend has raised serious questions about how the suspect was able to get so close to the president. We speak to our reporter who was there. From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth. Well, dialing in is David Smith, our Washington Bureau Chief. David, thanks for joining us. You were at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday in Washington. Let's start by, can you just describe how it all unfolded and what it was like for you being in that room?
Yeah, it's great to be here. This is an annual dinner I've attended many times, and the evening began very normally. Guests in tuxedos and ball gowns filing into this subterranean ballroom at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Of course, what was different this year was Donald Trump was attending as president for the first time. He saluted during the National Anthem took his seat. And for about 30 to 40 minutes, we were just making small talk, eating salad, drinking wine. And then suddenly I heard some loud bangs towards the back of the ballroom. No idea what it was, as Trump himself said later. It could have been plates clattering. I turned, saw guests diving for cover under tables. And that sort of moved like a wave through the room and thought, well, maybe I had better do the same.
Yes. And this kind of extraordinary scene of security agents, secret service agents coming in to get the president and his wife, J.D. Vance, the vice president and his wife out and another senior White House officials who were present and who are reportedly the intended targets of this suspected attack. What was it like to experience that rapid security response?
It was stunning. The biggest thing I remember was just being utterly sort of confused and that sense of commotion and just not knowing what was happening. We were crouching under these tables as I looked around. I could see fear in the eyes of some of the guests. There was an eerie silence for a while and then we saw these Secret Service agents moving swiftly through the room treading on chairs to get to the stage and I got up to look what was happening. Trump and Vance had been whisked away and there were armed police there with helmets and rifles scouting out the room and just a general sense of disbelief for everybody and then in the minutes that ensued slowly but surely a certain kind of normality
returned and we got up and we started talking to each other. And of course, in a room full of journalists, there are a lot of phone calls to editors and people shooting video on their phones.
So the suspect is Cole Thomas Allen. What do we know about him? Because we do know reportedly that he'd been staying in the hotel where this dinner took place for some days prior to the attack, and that he'd also written a manifesto that he'd sent to his family about 10 minutes before carrying out this attempted attack.
That's right. The authorities say Alan is 31 years old. He's from near Los Angeles in California, is a teacher with a background in computer science and apparently enjoyed making video games, evidence perhaps of a small political donation. He apparently travelled to this event by train from California, which is a fairly unusual thing to do, and the suspicion there is perhaps he was avoiding airport metal detectors by going on the train. He apparently stayed as a guest in the hotel, which would have allowed him to get past at least some of the
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