Darren Lyn
27 April 2026•Update: 27 April 2026
The White House correspondents' dinner attended by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top US government officials Saturday night did not have the highest security level when a gunman charged the security perimeter and opened fire, according to media outlets.
Despite the lower level of security provided by the Trump administration for the event, the president told reporters after the shooting that the Secret Service and law enforcement did what they were supposed to do.
"I’m the one that would complain," said Trump. "I’d be up here right now saying they didn’t do their job. Oh, believe me, because, you know, it’s my life."
A government official told The Washington Post that the reason security was not at its highest level was because the White House correspondents' dinner is not an event that the president regularly attends.
"This is a dinner that (Trump) might not go to at the last minute and is not annually attended by him," the official said. "The State of the Union can only occur with the president, the WHCD has occurred many times without POTUS."
In addition to Trump and Vance being in attendance at the event, which was held at the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, DC, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were also on hand for the dinner.
Police said the gunman was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives and that one Secret Service officer was struck by a bullet but protected by a bulletproof vest.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that he did not view the incident as a security failure and noted that the gunman was detained before reaching the ballroom.
"On the contrary, it was a massive security success story," Blanche told CNN. "I mean, if you think about what happened as far as what we know right now, this suspect barely breached the perimeter."
Even though Trump and Blanche praised the security response to the shooting, other high-profile attendees, including Sen. John Fetterman and senior adviser for the US Agency for Global Media Kari Lake, questioned the security at the event. Rep. Ritchie Torres has called for an investigation into the security staffing for the dinner.
"While this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk, the system worked," Blanche told NBC News as he doubled down on the effectiveness of the Secret Service detail. "All of us were safe. President Trump was safe."
