Weijia Jiang: I was on stage last night with the president. This is what I saw.
Weijia Jiang on WH Correspondents' Dinner shooting: "No amount of reporting can prepare you" 04:39
The night was going exactly as planned.
For eight months, as president of the White House Correspondents Association, I'd been working on this dinner party. Above all, I had hoped it would restore some normalcy between the Trump administration and the press. Maybe I was naïve, but I wanted it to be a room we don't see enough of in Washington: a bipartisan one. And it was.
There were more than 2,500 journalists and guests dressed to the nines. CEOs, celebrities, ambassadors and members of the cabinet including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Todd Blanche, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin — many just feet from the president in the ballroom.
Most important was Donald Trump himself: after 15 years of boycotting the dinner, he finally decided to come. It was the first time he had attended as president.
Trump was in a great mood. The Marine Corps Band had just played The Star-Spangled Banner, and the president was on the dais. We were chatting about the last time he attended, when Barack Obama was president.
"You know, everyone thinks I was upset by all those jokes Obama made. But I really wasn't," I remember him telling me as Oz Pearlman — the mentalist I had booked for the night — asked if he could interrupt. He was doing a trick on the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and he wanted the president and me to watch.
Leavitt is due to give birth in a matter of days, and she'd told me earlier that Pearlman claimed he'd figure out the name of her unborn baby. "There's no way he would ever be able to do that," she said. "Very few people know it. It's impossible."
We all watched. Melania Trump, seated to Leavitt's left, was quite engaged. Oz prepared to turn over a piece of paper with a name scribbled on it with a Sharpie.
Oz revealed a name to the first lady and Leavitt, and I watched her reaction. The look on her face—shock and delight—is an image now frozen in my mind, because it's the last thing I saw before chaos unfolded.
The Free Press: The American Way Is Under Fire
At that very moment, we heard commotion. I looked out in the audience and thought there might have been a heckler. But I didn't see one.
More in Politics
Before I could make sense of what was unfolding, armed agents rushed toward the dais. They multiplied quickly, sprinting from the other side of the stage to surround us. I heard shouts of "down, down, down, get down."
I got out of my chair and was following Trump when he hit the ground. I got on my hands and knees too. Only later did I see a big bruise on my left knee. I was crawling, and we were ushered behind the stage.
I crawled to the holding area, where the show producers were watching the video feeds of the live images from inside the ballroom.
Inside weren't just my fellow journalists but also the most important people in my life. Moments before the chaos unfolded, I locked eyes with my 82-year-old father who waved to me. He looked happy. He and my mom both struggle with mobility. "Where are their wheelchairs?" I wanted to know. Who's going to push them out of danger? My husband and my 7-year-old daughter were there too. Was she scared? Was she crying? I wanted to hold her.
I scanned the feeds looking for them, shaking. I asked anyone who could hear me: What happened? What's wrong? Did anyone get hurt?
I have covered many shootings and murders in my career, including Sandy Hook in 2012. But this was the first time I found myself on the other side. No one can prepare you for it.
There was a rush of advance guys and Secret Service guys. "Blue, blue!" one said, rushing toward the room where Trump was being held.
There were several unverified news reports and tweets. Clearly, there was a situation with a shooter and a gun, but the information I had was just that the president wants the show to go on. He did not want to be deterred.
At some point, I went back on stage and assured everyone that the show would go on. People were glad to hear that. We waited and waited. Then one of the advance guys told me the president wanted to talk to me. I was led into a room by the president's closest aides.
The first lady was standing and offered me a smile. "Are you OK?" she asked. Vice President Vance entered and asked the same.Secretary Rubio was next to me. I just kept hearing, "We're going to the White House. We're going to the White House."
But the president did not want to go. He told me that he wanted to get back on stage. But also that his speech — a "shtick," he called it — would now be "totally inappropriate."
They decided on a press conference at the White House in 30 minutes, which I announced to the ballroom. The room laughed. I assured them it wasn't a joke.
Then, to the room of reporters, I added: "I said earlier tonight that journalism is a public service, because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis, not away from it. And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms in the First Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are."
I got a ride with the presidential motorcade, which had waited for me. Other reporters ran to the White House in their heels.
He looked solemn as he walked to the podium. After he gave an update about the suspect, he called on me to ask the first question. I wanted to know what he was thinking when he realized what was going on.
He said, "It was always shocking when something like this happens, happened to me, a little bit, and that never changes the fact we're sitting right next to each other, first lady on my right, and I heard a noise, and sort of thought it was a tray."
I was struck when Trump acknowledged how the shooting shaped his view of his relationship with the press. He said, "This was an event dedicated to 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, because the fact that they just unified. I saw a room that was just totally unified."
Unity isn't a word we hear much these days. But that's how I felt, too.
Trump insists we are having the dinner again in 30 days. Let's see.
As for the name of Leavitt's baby girl: I saw it. But I haven't had a chance to confirm it.
.jpg)
%20(2).PNG)