It was 10:31 p.m. on Saturday when President Trump walked into the White House briefing room, still dressed in his tuxedo and bow tie, to talk about what may have been yet another attempt on his life.
“Well, thank you very much,” he said. “That was very unexpected!”
Moments before he walked out, the president posted surveillance footage of a suspect making a mad dash through the cavernous halls of the Washington Hilton. That’s where Mr. Trump was attending the White House correspondents’ dinner when gunfire broke out at the hotel. Very little was clear about whatever had happened there, a mile and a half up the hill.
But the president wanted to talk about it.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens,” he said, standing with the first lady, the vice president, the defense secretary, the secretary of state, the acting attorney general, the F.B.I. director and the press secretary — all still in their evening wear from the dinner.
But, really, he argued, the whole thing was just the latest example of why he needs to build his maximum-security, legally challenged ballroom at the White House.
“I didn’t want to say this,” he said, “but 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 a much more secure. It’s got — it’s drone proof, it’s bulletproof glass.”
And then he gave the first question of the night to Weijia Jiang, the CBS News correspondent and the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who had been seated next to him at the dinner before pandemonium broke out.
“Madam chairman,” he said, “I just want to say you did a fantastic job. What a beautiful evening.” (Mr. Trump does not usually speak this way to the reporters who cover him.)
She asked him what was going through his mind when he realized his life may have been in danger again. He told the tale: He was sitting with the first lady on his other side when he heard a noise he thought sounded familiar and nonthreatening. “I thought it was a tray going down,” he said. “I’ve heard that many times, and it was a pretty loud noise, and it was from quite far away.”
His wife was not so sure, he said.
“Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened,” he explained. “I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, ‘That’s a bad noise.’” She looked quite stoic behind him in the briefing room. The only word she spoke during the news conference was “No,” after being asked if she would like to say anything at all. The president said that it was “a rather traumatic experience for her.”
He described being “whisked away,” thanked law enforcement profusely and said “there wasn’t a whole lot of time to be thinking, because it was a matter of seconds before we were out the door.”
On the whole, Mr. Trump’s response from the podium late Saturday evening was remarkably zen from a man who has survived two assassination attempts, and whose wife was just ducking under a table while gun-toting agents bum-rushed the ballroom around them.
Who knows how or if the president’s mind-set, his rhetoric, his political instincts or his security apparatus may change in the coming days or weeks. Very little was revealed at the news conference about the suspect’s motivations.
Still, Mr. Trump kept downplaying any insinuation that this latest scare would alter how he goes about his life.
“I like not to think about it,” he said. “I lead a pretty normal life, considering, you know, it’s a dangerous life. I think I’m, I think I handle it as well — as well as it can be handled.”
He added: “To be honest with you, I’m not a basket case.”
All week long he had been aiming screeds at the news outlets in the room, but now he was praising the reporters before him, complimenting their outfits, using a polite tone of voice and thanking them for their work.
“You’ve been very responsible in your coverage,” he said. “I will say I’ve been seeing what’s been out. You’ve been very responsible.”
This was definitely not the message he had planned to deliver to the media tonight. He said he was going to make what he called the “most inappropriate speech ever made,” and sounded a bit disappointed that he had been robbed of that opportunity. So disappointed, in fact, that he vowed the dinner would be rescheduled for some time in the next 30 days.
But then, he would need a rewrite — or at least that is what he said for now.
“I don’t know if I can ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight,” he said. “I think I’m going to be probably very nice. I’ll be very boring the next time, but we’re going to have a great event.”
