6 min readApr 26, 2026 09:56 AM IST
US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were on Saturday (Apr 25), escorted out of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner following a shooting incident near the venue in Washington.
The event, held at the Washington Hilton, was disrupted by a loud noise believed to be gunfire, prompting an immediate security response.
POTUS later addressed reporters at the White House and said that the suspect was armed with multiple weapons before the Secret Service seized him.
He further said, “I guess”, when asked if he was the intended target of the shooting.
Here are the key quotes:
- “I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people that do the most… that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way… I hate to say I’m honoured by that, but I’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot. We’ve taken this country, and we were a laughingstock for years, and now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
- “That was very unexpected, but incredibly acted upon by the Secret Service and law enforcement… A man charged a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of the Secret Service. They acted very quickly and have just released, for purposes of transparency and clarity, I’ve ordered it to be put out… a tape showing the violence of this thug who attacked our Constitution, and also showing how quickly the Secret Service and law enforcement acted on our country’s behalf…”
- “One officer was shot but saved by the fact that he was wearing a very good bulletproof vest. He was shot from a very close distance with a very powerful gun, and the vest did the job. He’s doing great. He’s in great shape; he has very high spirits, and we told him we love him and respect him…”
- “…We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight, and I say it’s not a particularly secure building… This is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s much more secure. It’s got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the war room. That’s why the Secret Service, that’s why the military is demanding it. They’ve wanted the war room for 150 years for lots of different reasons, but today’s a little bit different because today we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before…”
- “The law enforcement and DC police just spoke with the mayor… You see the attacker in different positions, but you also see the attacker totally subdued and under control… This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin who sought to kill in Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two 2 ago… and in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close. We really had, again, some great work done by law enforcement…”
- “In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully… we had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives. Those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not. But yet everybody in that room, a big record-setting crowd… There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together. I watched, and I was very impressed by that.”
- “The First Lady and I were taken very well care of, very quickly rushed off the stage. Vice President JD Vance was here; it was likewise beautifully done… Marco had the same thing. Pete was there. Pete didn’t want any help. He didn’t want anybody to help him… I think you also said that it was very impressive…”
- When asked if he was the intended target of the shooting, he said, “I guess… these people are crazy… You never know. It was very far away from me. I had to go through a lot. We had resources all over. We had resources sitting at tables, literally in disguise, sitting maybe at your table. Who knows? But we had people all over the room. So he had a long way to go. That was really the first line of defence, and they got him. They (law enforcement personnel) really acted incredibly.”
- When asked whether he or his team was aware of any threats beforehand, he said, “No… There was no notification. We had no idea… Maybe we will be able to tell you tomorrow. He (the attacker) is in custody. They (law enforcement officials) are asking him a lot of questions… They are already at his apartment. It is California…”
- “It was so shocking that something like that happened. It’s happened to me… That never changes. The fact that we were sitting right next to each other, the First Lady and I… I heard a noise and… I thought it was a tray going down. I’ve heard that many times, and it was a pretty loud noise. It was from quite far away. He hadn’t breached the area at all. They really got him. But it was quite far away, and it was a gun. Some people really understood that pretty quickly; other people didn’t… Melania was very cognizant of what happened. I think she knew immediately what had happened. She was saying, ‘That’s a bad noise.’ And we were whisked away along with other people,” he said on being asked about his reaction to the incident.
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