Oz Pearlman, the mentalist who was set to perform at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, recounted exactly what happened Saturday after a gunman fired shots near the event. Pearlman, who was less than a foot from Donald Trump, explained to CNN’s Dana Bash that the pair looked at each other “for about two seconds” before the president was whisked away.
Pearlman was onstage entertaining the president and First Lady Melania Trump when the shots rang out. As he told Bash, he initially thought the sound was a bomb.
“Because of the way that it was being approached, [it] wasn’t like guns out,” he said. “It was like to stop someone. So my first panic when you see in the videos, looking, looking, and then I go down.”
“You can look at the video, I don’t know the distance, but less than a foot away from me,” Pearlman continued. “I’ll never forget the image for my whole life. Because I’m on all fours turned like this. They bring the president down directly in front of me. And we just look at each other for about two seconds.”
“I unfortunately said that the clip with me and President Trump will be seen five years, 10 years, and 20 years from now,” he added. “And it was spot on, but for all the wrong reasons.”
The president has had his own response to the attempted shooting. “What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” he wrote on Truth Social on Sunday morning. “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!”
“While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World, The White House,” Trump continued. “The ridiculous Ballroom lawsuit, brought by a woman walking her dog, who has absolutely No Standing to bring such a suit, must be dropped, immediately. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with with its construction, which is on budget and substantially ahead of schedule!!!”
