On Sunday evening, Donald Trump will recount to “60 Minutes” what transpired when a man pulled a gun during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. In a teaser shared online by CBS, the president tells Norah O’Donnell how he “dropped to the floor” when Secret Service demanded he do so.
“Well, what happened is, it was a little bit me, I wanted to see what was happening and I wasn’t making it that easy for him,” Trump said in the preview clip. “I wanted to see what was going on.”
“And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one. And different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people and I probably made them act a little bit more slow. I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me see, wait a minute.’”
Trump added that he and Melania Trump began walking with the agents, who asked them to lower to the floor. “So I went down and First Lady went down also, but we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking.”
The president insisted he was standing up at first, “and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over because I’m not looking to be standing too tall.”
Once they were “about halfway there” the Secret Service again told the president and Melania to go down to the floor: “And they said, please go down to the floor, please go down to the floor. So I dropped to the floor, so did the First Lady.”
Earlier on Sunday, WHCA president and CBS News’ Weijia Jiang praised her fellow journalists for their composure during the shooting and its aftermath. “Last night’s shooting at the Washington Hilton was a harrowing moment for everyone in attendance,” she wrote on X. “We express our deepest gratitude to the U.S. Secret Service and all law enforcement personnel who ensured the safety of everyone in the ballroom and beyond. Their actions protected thousands of guests, and we wish a full and speedy recovery to the officer who was injured in the line of duty. We are grateful everyone in attendance was unharmed, including the president, the first lady and the vice president.”
