US leader Donald Trump has described being president a “very dangerous profession” after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday (25.04.26) night.
President Donald Trump thinks he has a dangerous job
The 79-year-old president, his wife Melania, and Vice President JD Vance were rushed from the ballroom at the Washington Hilton, while other attendees hid under tables after a man – who has been identified as Cole Thomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from California – rushed passed a security checkpoint, and in a hastily-assembled press conference afterwards, Trump reflected on the dangers of his job.
Asked about threats to his life, he said: “I get that throbbing feeling every once in a while. But you know what? That’s okay. This is a dangerous business.
“You have race car drivers as an example, 1/10 of 1% die. Bull riders, 1/10 of 1%. That’s not a lot, but it’s – people die. When you’re president, it’s about 5%. If somebody would have told me that, maybe I wouldn’t have run. Okay? This is, this is a very dangerous profession…
“The people who make the biggest impact, those are the ones they go after.”
Trump described the suspect as a “very sick person” and a “lone wolf” as he reflected on the “crazy” incident.
He added: “I want to live because I want to make this country great.”
The president praised the efforts of police and the Secret Service, noting an agent had been shot.
Referencing two previous incidents where he was shot at or allegedly the target of similar plans, he said: “It’s always shocking when something like this happens. Happened to me a little bit.
“It was very quick. There wasn’t a lot of time to be thinking … I don’t like to let these sick people, these thugs, these horrible, horrible people change the fabric of our lives, change the course of what we do.
“It was, in one way, very beautiful, a very beautiful thing to see a man charge a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of secret service, and they acted very quickly.”
Many of the assembled media at the press conference had been at the dinner, and Trump promised a rescheduled event will be “better” and “safer”.
He said: “I see so many tuxedos and beautiful dresses.
“It was a little different evening than we thought. But we’re going to do it again.”
The former Apprentice star will change his planned speech at the gala to be less critical.
He said: “We’re talking about free speech in our constitution. That’s what it’s all about. Not just White House correspondents, it was really based on free speech in our constitution. But I said, very importantly, that we’ll do it again within the next 30 days, it will make it bigger and better, and even nicer.”
Trump used the incident to argue for the construction of a ballroom at the White House as he claimed the Washington Hilton was “not a particularly secure building”.
He said: “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. … They’ve wanted the ballroom 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.”
