Donald Trump breaks silence after shooting derails White House Correspondents Dinner
Topics: Donald Trump
Phoebe Tonks
Featured Image Credit: Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump
Donald Trump has broken his silence following an attempted shooting at the White House Correspondent’s dinner on Saturday evening.
The annual event marked a significant milestone for the president, at it was the first time he had attended while in office after having previously swerved the event on multiple occasions.
Things initially got underway as planned, with Trump receiving a warm welcome from attendees as the dinner began to be served.
Yet mere minutes into the proceedings, chaos began to unfold as five gunshots echoed throughout the ballroom at the Hilton hotel, prompting an emergency evacuation of the President, senior cabinet officials, and finally the ultimate cancelling of the entire evening.
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Addressing members of the press after the ordeal, Trump was asked directly how he felt in the moment, as this is the third time a shooting has taken place in his vicinity.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit. The fact we were sitting right next to each other, and the First Lady on my right, and I heard a noise and thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down - I’ve heard that many times - it was a pretty loud noise, and it was from pretty far away.
“He hadn’t breached the area at all before we got him. It was quite far away - but it was a gun. Some people really understood that pretty quickly, others didn’t. I was watching to see what was happening, but probably should’ve gone down even faster.”
Speaking about how his wife had responded, Trump continued: “Melania was very conscious of what happened. I think she knew immediately what had happened - she was saying ‘that’s a bad noise’. We were whisked away along with other people.”
Trump then went on to praise law enforcement officials for their swift intervention, as he added: “The performance of the secret service, the police - all of law enforcement - was really very good. “It was very quick. There wasn’t much time to be thinking as it was mere seconds before we were out the door.”
As a result of the shooting, a single suspect was quickly apprehended and taken into custody, but as a direct consequence of the security scare, the dinner was sadly cancelled, with the President vowing to reschedule it in the immediate future.
“We very much wanted to continue. I don’t like to let these sick people, these thugs, these horrible, horrible people, change the fabric of our lives or change the course of what we do.
So we held out right until the end, but they didn’t want to take a chance and I understand that’s protocol. But we’ll hopefully be doing one within the next 30 days or sooner.”
Hinting at his planned speech from the night that may now never be heard, Trump continued: “I am ready, willing and able! I was all set to really rip it and I said to my people, this would really be the most inappropriate speech to give - so I’ll have to save it. I don’t know if I can ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’ll probably be very boring and nice next time. We’re going to have a great event.”
In a further line of questioning, a reporter asked Trump how he felt about being targeted for assassination again, especially given his history so far which has included two unsuccessful attempts.
Trump responded: “I’ve studied assassinations and I must tell you, the most impactful people - the people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, those are the ones they go after.
“They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way. When you look at the people, whether it was an attempt or successful attempt, they’re very impactful people. They’re big names.”
“I hate to say I’m honoured by that. I’ve done a lot. We’ve taken this country from being a laughing stock for years, now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. There’s a lot of people that are not happy about that.”