Correspondents’ dinner shooting suspect allegedly wrote about targeting U.S. officials, says Trump

What it was like to be at the dinner when shots rang out

‘It was unreal’: Inside the shooting incident at the White House correspondents’ dinner

A man armed with guns and knives stormed the lobby outside a high-profile journalists’ dinner attended by U.S. President Donald Trump and multiple senior U.S. leaders on Saturday night, rushing toward the ballroom before Secret Service agents swarmed and took him into custody. CBC correspondent Paul Hunter tells chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton what he saw and heard from inside the dinner’s ballroom.

It’s Paul Hunter in Washington — I was at the dinner last night. 

My table was at the back of the ballroom right by where it all happened. The ballroom doors were directly behind us and had been kept open as the night’s program began, with Trump at the head table up front. 

All of a sudden came multiple, super-loud, POP POP POP sounds from just outside those doors. Quite clearly rapid gunfire. I mean it was LOUD.

But my first thought was “This can’t be real,” that it must be some sort of ill-advised skit or joke. Because the president was here. There’s no way it’s real.

For a split second everyone sat, stunned. But then people started shouting, “Shooter! Shooter! Get down! Get down!” and it instantly sank in.

Pandemonium followed. Everyone diving under tables, chairs being knocking over. Complete mayhem. 

Behind me was a thick, concrete column. I hid behind it, seeing my colleagues from Radio-Canada across the way crouching under our table. All I was thinking was, “What will happen now?”

Quite honestly I wondered whether a bunch of masked shooters would now come through those doors and start spraying the room with gunfire. Is everyone outside those open doors behind us now dead? Will people around me get shot? Will I get shot? Is my hiding place safe? 

I looked up at the stage and saw Trump already long gone. Then someone near me shouted out that there could be a shooter in the room. No one knew anything. Secret Service agents had meanwhile flooded the front of the room, which added to the surreality of it all. 

How could there be so many of them? And how did they move so quickly? I watched them race toward all the senior politicos sitting at the tables up front, including multiple cabinet secretaries.

Earlier in the evening I’d spotted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. And with Trump and Vice-President JD Vance at the head table, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth nearby, suffice to say it was a supreme power room.

As things quietened, those cabinet secretaries and other senior politicos were rushed past where we were then standing and effectively pushed out of the room, Secret Service agents surrounding each of them. I happened to notice Kash Patel, head of the FBI, moving directly past our table. It all seemed like madness. Like a bad Hollywood movie. 

Then for what seemed ages we were all left in lockdown, wondering what was going on outside the now closed doors. Eventually we were allowed out only to see a wall of police cars, lights flashing, outside the hotel front door. It was a long walk home.