A salad with burrata had barely been served when panic took over the room and hundreds of attendees threw themselves under the tables without understanding what was happening.
Expectation was maximum at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the first that Donald Trump attended as president after years of boycotting the event. Nothing predicted the abrupt turn of the evening.
Just a few minutes ago, the president and the first lady, Melania Trump, had entered the grand ballroom of the Hilton hotel.where more than 2,000 guests—government staff, journalists, diplomats and Washington’s elite—were preparing for a gala night.
“Down, down!”
A military band had marked the welcome and the sound of cutlery began to fill the room. The expectation for the president’s words grew, until everything changed suddenly.
Three or four sharp shots rang out very close to one of the tables. “What’s happening? It can’t be! Down, down!” someone shouted.
Instinctively, the guests, dressed in evening clothes, rushed to the floor and took cover under the tables, while dozens of Secret Service agents with long guns jumped on chairs to protect the president.
At the significant table, Trump—flanked by the first lady and the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Weijia Jiang— He barely noticed the detonations and understood the seriousness of the situation when he saw the attendees bend down.
Later, the president himself would say that at first he thought a tray had fallen.
In a matter of seconds, which seemed eternal, The agents evacuated the presidential couple, the vice president, JD Vance, and several members of the Governmentamong them the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
It wasn’t a layup. Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man armed with a hunting shotgun, a pistol and several knives, He had tried to access the event and was stopped by the police without causing any casualties.
The guests had had to go through a security arch to access the room, but not to enter the hotel lobby.
During those first moments, between overturned chairs and raised tablecloths, uncertainty was complete.
Without coverage in the room, alert messages to family members and newsrooms were trapped in the outbox.
From the ground, you could see Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hurriedly crossed the corridor escorted by agents.
From fear to the news
The dense silence was only broken when it began to become clear that the incident was outside the room. and that there was no immediate danger. Then, the journalists went back to doing their thing: asking.
“This is a crime scene,” an agent warned several attendeesbefore adding that the place was safe and that they could evacuate without risk.
Shortly after, the authorities began to evacuate the premises. In the lobby and hallways of the hotel – the same place where Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 – reporters briefed their media amid confusion about whether the gala would resume.
Trump, sheltered in a room, wanted to continue with the event so as not to tarnish the night, but his security team convinced him to leave the place. He headed to the White House, where, still dressed in a tuxedo, he offered one of the most unusual press conferences in memory.
From there, the president, who survived an assassination attempt during the 2024 campaign, called for unity and to avoid violence.
In front of the journalists, many still dressed, He adopted an unusually conciliatory tone and proposed rescheduling the dinner in a month.
Meanwhile, at the hotel, the non-press guests, without the urgency to get to work, recovered from the shock in their own way.
Some had taken bottles of wine from the tables; others posed for photos in the lobby. “It’s a historic night, we have to immortalize it,” said one of them.
Eduard Ribas i Admetlla.
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