NPR’s view from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner : NPR

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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an annual event that brings together top government officials and the journalists who cover them, descended into chaos on Saturday after shots rang out at the Washington Hilton.

Just minutes into the dinner, guests heard muffled popping sounds as a gunman attempted to charge past a security checkpoint.

President Trump — who was attending the event for the first time since taking office — was rushed out of the building by Secret Service agents, as were First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and a slew of cabinet officials.

The night ended with a suspect apprehended, a law enforcement officer injured and a press conference at the White House, where Trump promised the dinner would be rescheduled.

Hundreds of attendees, many of them reporters and lawmakers, took shelter beneath their tables amidst the chaos, before evacuating the hotel and — in many cases — shifting back into work more. Several NPR journalists were among them, and quickly jumped on the air to share their experiences and observations.

Here’s how the night unfolded, according to NPR journalists in attendance.

Shots rang out toward the end of the first course 

Less than an hour into dinner, around 8:30 p.m. ET, attendees heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the back of the room.

“People were just finishing up their … salads, and plates were being cleared, when we heard this ‘bang, bang, bang,'” said White House Correspondent Franco Ordoñez. “And then, just, crash.”

Everything went crashing to the floor, Ordoñez said: plates, trays and people taking shelter.

While people didn’t know exactly what had just happened, attendees and staff alike knew to get down immediately.

“There were several members of the waitstaff who hit the ground next to our table, with one woman in particular just crying that she didn’t want to die — just terrified in that moment, in a way that I think I will always remember,” said Courtney Dorning, a senior editor for All Things Considered. 

White House Correspondent Deepa Shivaram had a different vantage point.

Shivaram was one of the roughly dozen journalists traveling in the rotating presidential pool on Saturday night. During the dinner portion of the event, pool reporters were charging their laptops at tables in a hallway — closer to the security checkpoint where the shooting occurred — when they distinctly heard the sound of gunshots.

“We didn’t have eyes on what was going on, but it was very clear that something had happened,” Shivaram said.

Security agents hustled officials out of the room 

Videos from the scene show Secret Service rushing to the stage, where Trump was sitting with the first lady and vice president, mentalist Oz Pearlman — the night’s headliner — as well as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang of CBS News. All of them were hustled out of sight.

At that point “dozens and dozens” of security agents rushed into the ballroom, Ordoñez says, headed straight for the Cabinet members.

“You had Secret Service, you had officers in FBI jackets and DEA jackets,” he said. “I’m talking full tactical gear, literally jumping over people, jumping over tables, jumping over chairs.”

Within minutes they escorted out high-ranking officials, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

From the hallway, Shivaram saw armed Secret Service agents rushing those same Cabinet members into two small office rooms, “basically just trying to keep as many people safe as they could.”

“And then about four minutes after those shots rang out, I saw a Secret Service agent walk by and [they] said that the shooter was in custody,” she added.

Back in the ballroom, Ordoñez described an “eerie silence” and “a lot of confusion” among the attendees watching from the floor.

“As they were evacuated from the room, watching the security officers’ shoulders drop a little bit, I feel like our shoulders started to drop a little bit and our heads started to pop up,” Ordoñez says.

Attendees eventually made their way out

Dorning estimates people in the room felt safe enough to emerge from underneath the tables after about four or five minutes.

“Everyone pretty much went into reporting mode as soon as they were up from the floor,” she said.

Many in the room whipped out their cameras to start filming, and made the rounds to glean and share details.

Ordoñez said initial reports from the other journalists and attendees he spoke with varied: Some heard three bangs, some heard five, and some said they could smell gunpowder.

It was still unclear at that moment whether gunshots had been fired in the room or outside the room. There were also questions as to whether the night’s programming would continue. Ordoñez said White House staffers told him they were unsure whether Trump was still in the building or planning to come back.

“First, we heard that President Trump was going to return and speak and the program was going to continue as scheduled,” Dorning said. “And then by the time we left the building, the event had been canceled.”

At 9:17 p.m., Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement.” About twenty minutes later, he posted they were leaving the premises at the recommendation of law enforcement and promised a press conference at the White House in half an hour.

Immigration Correspondent Ximena Bustillo said once it became clear the dinner was over, “it was a giant funnel out” of a relatively tight basement.

“Even just going up the escalators, they are like one-person escalators,” Bustillo said. “And [women] are all in long dresses down to our feet. So it’s not like there can be a very quick exit out.”

Politicians and reporters reconvene at the White House

Shivaram, traveling in the pool, said Trump’s motorcade made the few-minute drive from the hotel to the White House with sirens blaring.

They arrived at the North Lawn about shortly before 10 p.m. ET, though reporters didn’t get a good view of him exiting the car.

A short while later, Trump spoke to reporters — many of them still wearing black-tie attire — in the White House press briefing room. It is named after James Brady, the former press secretary who was shot during the 1981 attempted assasination of then-President Ronald Reagan outside the very same hotel where the correspondents’ dinner is held each year.

Trump, flanked by Vance, Patel, the first lady and other high-ranking officials, said he initially thought the distant disturbance was the sound of a tray being dropped. The president praised the Secret Service and law enforcement for their quick response. He also thanked the press for their “responsible coverage.”

“This was an event dedicated to the freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press and in a certain way it did,” he said.