Leave it to Donald Trump to interpret a serious security incident, a threatened attempt on his life, to his own advantage. After the American president had to be evacuated from a dinner with journalists on Saturday evening, he emphasized at a press conference the importance of the White House getting its own ballroom: one of his controversial projects.
“Today we need levels of security that no one has probably ever seen before,” said the president, still dressed in his tuxedo.
The Hilton, where President Ronald Reagan was seriously injured in an assassination attempt just outside the hotel in 1981, was to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. As president, Trump was always conspicuous in his absence at this annual gala of political journalists, politicians and celebrities.
Until he decided to go this year. Before he could berate the press there, shots rang out outside the dining room. The President, first lady Melania, Vice President JD Vance and other politicians were immediately taken to safety by their guards.
The shooter, identified as Cole Allen, 31, a teacher from California, was arrested at the scene. According to police in Washington, he was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and several knives and shot at the Secret Service, the agency that protects the president, during a security checkpoint. An officer was injured. “They seem to think he’s a ‘lone wolf‘ was,” Trump himself reported about the suspect.
Previous attacks
It seems likely to Trump that it came for him. “The people who have the biggest impact are the ones they target,” he said. “I hate to say it, but I feel honored by that. After all, we have achieved a lot,” said the president.
The president is unpopular with a majority of the American population, according to polls about 60 percent, partly because of the war he started in Iran and the resulting high fuel prices.
Trump escaped death during the 2024 election when he was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and a bullet grazed his ear. The images, in which Trump clenched his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight”, became iconic during his election race against Kamala Harris.
Two months later, a gunman was arrested at Trump’s golf course in Florida for allegedly trying to kill the president. Last month, a Pakistani man was convicted of a plot to kill Trump and other politicians on behalf of the Iranian regime.
At the Correspondents’ Dinner, a comedian traditionally performs and makes fun of the president, after which the president can make fun of journalists and others in the audience. The last time Trump attended, in 2011, he was ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist by Barack Obama.
According to some, that embarrassing situation would have motivated him to run for president himself. But he never showed up in that position in his first term. Now that he did, no comedian was welcome.
Relationship with press
Trump has a tumultuous relationship with the press. On the one hand, he insults serious journalists by calling them ‘fake news’ and pretending that they are no good. On the other hand, he is permanently available to reporters and never misses an opportunity to appear in front of their cameras.
On Saturday he lashed out at his Truth Social The New York Timeswhich had broken news about the construction company building a massive ballroom at the White House. Without input from Congress or the municipality of Washington, Trump had a wing of the presidential residence demolished to replace it with an architecturally questionable party room with an underground bunker.
This would be financed with money from anonymous donors and therefore cost the taxpayer nothing. But the Times revealed that the same construction company earns a remarkably large amount of money from a private contract to renovate the park just in front of the White House.
The intention is for the journalists’ gala to take place in a month’s time, Trump said, back in the White House. “The evening turned out a little differently than we thought, but we are going to do it again.”
