Up First from NPR
White House Response To Shooting, Shooter Investigation, King Charles State Visit
27 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What happened during the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting?
President Trump reads an attack Saturday night as a sign of his importance.
Really, if you're a consequential president, you're in much more danger than if you're not a consequential president.
Security tackled a gunman. NPR's Tamara Keith was there and follows up.
I'm Steve Inskeep with A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. The suspect in Saturday's attack appears in federal court today. Authorities say he had a shotgun, a handgun, and knives. His own family warned police just minutes before the attack, so what more is known about the suspect?
And this weekend's shooting may have altered the agenda of the British royal visit to Washington today, but there's still plenty of pageantry and politics to discuss. Tensions over the wars in Iran and Ukraine have created a rift between the two allies. President Trump says, though, this visit can mend that. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
When Congress eliminated funding for public media last year, we saw a groundswell of support for NPR. I'm Erika Barris from Planet Money, and it is not too late to be part of this movement. If you missed making a donation during public media giving days, do it right now. Show your support for public radio that is by the people, for the people at donate.npr.org. And thanks.
We're following up this morning on an incident at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
This happened on Saturday.
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Chapter 2: What do we know about the suspect in the shooting incident?
A gunman tried to rush past security on the way into the ballroom where the president, vice president, cabinet members and lawmakers were about to have dinner with the media. Shots were fired. The president shared his initial thoughts after the gunshots on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday with Nora O'Donnell.
How worried were you that there were going to be injuries?
I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world.
NPR senior political correspondent Tamara Keith joins us. Tam, you were in the ballroom at the Washington Hilton. Walk us through what happened.
There was a muffled noise that sounded like a rapid burst of gunfire. Then Secret Service agents came running into the room from all angles. The president and vice president were pulled from the stage. Everyone took cover. This is a room with 2,600 people. It was tense and scary as security details climbed over tables and chairs searching for people who are in the presidential line of succession.
What we know now is that the gunman was actually one floor above the ballroom. He ran through a security checkpoint headed for the stairs that lead down to the ballroom, but he was tackled before he got there. The acting Attorney General Todd Blanche characterized the incident this way Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press.
While this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk, and there's no doubt that that's something that we're going to have to learn from over the next couple weeks, the system worked. We were safe.
Tim, you're a former president of the Correspondents Association. That means that you have planned one of these dinners. Tell us about the security situation. How's that set up?
This dinner has long been held at the Washington Hilton, which has a special entrance for the president and a secure holding room behind the stage. Some of these unique security features were added after President Reagan was shot outside of the hotel in 1981. When the president attends the WHCA dinner, the Secret Service actually takes over the security.
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Chapter 3: How did President Trump respond to the shooting?
Well, Blanche says preliminary information indicates that Allen traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago. And then from there on to Washington, D.C., he had a room at the Hilton Hotel where the correspondence dinner was taking place. He also had a shotgun, a handgun and knives on him when he tried to storm the ballroom. Blanche also said this on NBC's Meet the Press.
We believe that he was targeting administration officials in this attack, attempted attack. But that's, again, quite preliminary as law enforcement continues to go through all the evidence.
And that, of course, raises the all-important question of motive. Blanche says officials are still investigating, digging in on that to try to get an answer to the motive question asked. But again, we're just 36 hours or so into this investigation, so it is early.
Yeah, but one thing that seems a little unusual, the president and the White House have been providing information on this investigation. So what have they said? Right.
A White House official told NPR that Allen's brother got in touch with law enforcement not long before the incident on Saturday, just minutes before it happened, in fact, and allegedly told them about a piece of writing that Allen had written and sent to family members.
The official also said that Allen's sister had told law enforcement that Allen referenced a plan to, quote unquote, do something to fix the issues with today's world. Again, that's according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity. And then you also have the president sharing photos of the suspect on social media not long after this all happened on Saturday night.
This is all highly unusual, I have to say. Traditionally, particularly once there's a suspect in custody, which was immediate in this instance, prosecutors will speak in court and court filings. And that's pretty much it.
Yes, after the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign, if you think back to that, the FBI did give updates on what they were finding out in their investigation. But they were able to do that in large part because the gunman there was dead. So they were not trying to build a case to prosecute in court.
And here, of course, prosecutors will do that with the suspected gunman here.
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