“I’ve never been in a vehicle that moved so fast,” someone in the presidential motorcade texted me as it sped past the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after a gunman was arrested by the Secret Service outside the Washington Hilton’s main dining room. Donald Trump had been on stage when the shooting began, to give a speech at the annual dinner. I watched the motorcade rush up the north side of the White House from the steps of the Renwick Art Gallery across from the mansion. British flags flew on lampposts ahead of the King’s visit. People were trying to leave the Substack party I was attending. Company staff were told by the Secret Service to prevent people from exiting the top floor of the building. They formed a solid barrier at the top of the stairs.
The attacker, said to be carrying a shotgun, pistol and a knife, was caught near the main dinner show area. JD Vance was grabbed around the shoulders and thrown across the stage towards the exit. A reporter was in the bathroom when shots rang out outside. “The Secret Service was jumping on me on the stairs,” one attendee told me. “It was absolutely mind blowing,” said another person.
“The president will be holding a press conference at the White House in 30 minutes — this is no joke,” Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, announced from the stage at the main dinner as reporters and media executives rose from the floor. Shortly after she was seated in the front row of the press conference room inside the White House as Trump entered with his black-tie entourage. Trump was quiet, powerless and oblivious to everyone. “No one told me this was such a dangerous profession,” he said — as if attempted assassination was as familiar as signing an executive order. He seemed accustomed to dodging bullets—and using them to elevate himself to sainthood. He told the pressed press that only presidents who do something important, like Lincoln, suffer such attacks.
He stood at the podium in what looked to me like a pre-tied black tie, his team around him similarly dressed and similarly evacuated. There stood a Caroline Leavitt shaking her head, her blonde waves drying. Marco Rubio rolled on his toes to the President’s right. Vance grinned wildly into his winged collar. The vending machine in the White House press room was empty. Journalists sank into their seats as they waited to attend the after-party at the French Embassy. Instead, they were filing a copy of the latest threat on Trump’s life. A weekend that is supposed to be a celebration of the fourth estate – but is really a communal act of political onanism – had resulted in the press rushing back to the White House to hear the words of a president under whom the language – and the reality – of murder had flourished. America faces a rising tide of violence that we still don’t understand.
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Violence had re-entered Trump’s second term. The site was the very site, the Hilton Hotel, where Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. The level of visible violence in Washington has been evident in recent months. You still see National Guard troops walking into Starbucks, awkward and self-conscious. Installed by Trump to stop the city’s “crime emergency,” they’ve become normal — part of the landscape. At the same time, threats against Trump’s life from his critics have become part of the rhythm of his presidency. These events, which fuel online conspiracies or skewed interpretations, fuel an ideology on the right of Magas that is gaining ground among those in power.
Take last night. His aides quickly turned the attempted shooting into another excuse for the ballroom Trump is building in the East Wing. This would not have happened if everything had been placed on the ground under the President’s thumb, they argue. What a place to honor a free press, indeed. Familiarity, absurdity and violence always come together in a surreal way under Trump.
(Further reading: Attempted assassination of Donald Trump)
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