{"id":12274,"date":"2026-04-26T06:21:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T06:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/26\/trump-thought-sound-of-gunman-at-journalists-dinner-was-tray-falling-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T06:21:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T06:21:23","slug":"trump-thought-sound-of-gunman-at-journalists-dinner-was-tray-falling-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/04\/26\/trump-thought-sound-of-gunman-at-journalists-dinner-was-tray-falling-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump thought sound of gunman at journalists\u2019 dinner was tray falling – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Donald Trump said on Saturday night he initially thought that the sound of a gunman charging a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner was a tray falling, in his first remarks about what was going through his mind as the incident unfolded.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, it was totally shocking to me, and that never changes,\u201d Trump said, appearing to refer to the assassination attempt against him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a second incident on his golf course in Florida during the 2024 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard a noise, and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down many times,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a gun and some people really understood that quite quickly. Other people didn\u2019t. I was watching to see what was happening, probably should have gotten down a little faster.<\/p>\n

<\/gu-island><\/figure>\n

\u201cMelania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened,\u201d Trump said of his wife, who has been among the members of his family most concerned about security even before Trump faced assassination attempts. \u201cI think she knew immediately. She was saying \u2018it\u2019s a bad noise.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s description of his reaction to the episode came at a hastily arranged news conference in the briefing room at the White House, where he had been rushed back by motorcade ahead of a number of other senior cabinet officials who had attended the dinner.<\/p>\n

Asked why he thought he keeps being the target of assassination attempts, Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, and said: \u201cThe people that make the biggest impact, they\u2019re the ones that they go after. They don\u2019t go after the ones that don\u2019t do much, because they like it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still wearing his black tie dinner jacket, Trump was joined at the lectern by the vice-president, JD Vance, the FBI director, Kash Patel, the acting US attorney general, Todd Blanche, and the homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin.<\/p>\n

To the side of the room stood his wife, Melania Trump, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Trump\u2019s longtime aide Dan Scavino squeezed into the briefing room behind them.<\/p>\n

Trump had emerged into the briefing room with his brow furrowed and appeared to pause at the threshold, as if still contemplating what had transpired at the dinner, before opening his remarks by ticking through updates on the gunman.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a sick person, a very sick person,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe was running full blast, and they got him before he got any further. I was very far away, he wasn\u2019t anywhere close to breaching the doors of the ballroom. My impression is he was a lone wolf wack job.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was too early to know whether the gunman had political motivations or if he was spurred by the US\u2019s war against Iran, but said the man \u2013 pictured shirtless and on the ground in a post Trump sent on social media \u2013 was from California and appeared to be working alone.<\/p>\n

Trump said the gunman fired on a US Secret Service agent, who was saved by his bulletproof vest. He said he thought law enforcement were going to the gunman\u2019s apartment as he offered general praise for the agency, saying he thought they did a better job than at the Butler rally.<\/p>\n

When the incident unfolded, Trump had been seated on the high table inside the ballroom at the Washington DC Hilton hotel, where the dinner has been held for decades, in conversation with his wife and the president of the correspondents\u2019 association, the CBS News journalist Weijia Jiang.<\/p>\n

As the sound of gunfire rang out, US Secret Service agents rushed to cover the president\u2019s head and pushed them out of the ballroom. As other agents waded through the banquet tables to extract other cabinet officials, the gunman was apprehended in the lobby area, outside the room.<\/p>\n

Trump also suggested that he might not have run for president if Rubio, his 2016 presidential campaign rival who is now his secretary of state and national security adviser, had warned him about the potential of assassination attempts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a dangerous profession,\u201d Trump joked. \u201cNobody told me this was such a dangerous thing. If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have run. I\u2019ll take a pass.\u201d Still, he added: \u201cIt\u2019s a dangerous profession but I don\u2019t view it that way. I\u2019m here to do a job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump said on Saturday night he initially thought that the sound of a gunman charging a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner was a tray falling, in his first remarks about what was going through his mind as the incident unfolded. \u201cActually, it was totally shocking to me, and that never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}