President Donald Trump has addressed footage from Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It showed him falling to the floor as Secret Service agents evacuated him following gunfire. The president explained why that happened while speaking to 60 Minutes’ Norah O’Donnell.
Donald Trump explains his fall during evacuation
The incident happened at the Washington Hilton, where a gunman fired a shotgun at security personnel before sprinting through a magnetometer. However, he never reached the ballroom. Video from inside the event showed agents pulling Vice President JD Vance from his seat and rushing him out well before Donald Trump rose from the dais.
Speaking to Norah O’Donnell, Donald Trump reconstructed the sequence that led to what looked like his fall. “I started walking, and they said, ‘Please go down, please go down on the floor,’” Trump said. “So I went down, and the first lady went down also.” He reiterated that agents instructed the movement, “But we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking.”
O’Donnell asked whether the agents essentially directed the couple to crawl out of the ballroom. Trump responded, “Pretty much.” He then retold the account, explaining he had been moving “a little bent over” when agents again ordered him to the floor. “So I dropped to the floor, so did the first lady,” he said.
The interview also examined the evacuation timeline during the WHCD shooting incident. O’Donnell pointed out that Vance had already been led out more than 10 seconds before counterassault teams flanked the president. It took roughly 20 seconds for agents to extract Trump from the room. Trump acknowledged his own role in slowing the response. “Well, what happened is, it was a little bit me,” he said. “I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn’t making it that easy for them.”
The suspect was identified as Cole Thomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Los Angeles. According to a manifesto obtained by the New York Post, Allen allegedly intended to kill Trump and senior administration officials. He was apprehended at the scene after failing to breach the ballroom.
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu on Mandatory.
