The White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night was interrupted by violence when gunfire was exchanged between suspect Cole Allen and Secret Service agents at a Washington, D.C. hotel on Saturday night.
Allen was arrested on the scene and is currently in custody.
Tal Kopin, deputy Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe, was at the dinner. She spoke with GBH’s Tori Bedford about what she experienced and what the incident says about the current state of politics. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell us in your own words what happened last night?
We were seated, the Globe table was sort of at the far end of the ballroom, it all happened in the middle of the salad course at the time in the dinner when people chit-chat, they’re still making their way to their table. So we were sort of talking, people were taking pictures, greeting old friends, and all of a sudden people just started sort of hitting the ground, everyone sort of ducking under tables or crouching. And sort of a wave went through the ballroom of everyone just kind of dropping, and we immediately followed suit.
What I could see were the doors and law enforcement officers and security officials just streaming into the ballroom and making their way down the aisles as fast as they could, climbing over tables, climbing over chairs, as politely as they could... all headed toward the stage. And in the moment, we really had no idea what was happening. And it was clear that the attention was on the stage and getting, you know, President Trump secure, but it did not seem like they were sort of concerned about the doors in that moment. So I was sort of wondering to myself, did someone rush the stage? Was there a medical episode? It was very unclear in the moment what was actually happening.
As you were crouched down on the floor, what was going through your head?
So I was looking around trying to figure out what’s going on, assessing whether it might seem safe to sort of poke my head up over the table to try to get a peek to the other side and look around the room. Looking at my colleagues, looking where our guest was, that type of thing. It was figuring out how do I get safe and also what can I tell is happening around me in this moment.
This was President Trump’s first time attending a White House Correspondents Dinner as president. Shortly after the incident, he spoke to reporters, and he said this type of violence is a risk that comes with his job. Trump went on to say that people who are “impactful” are more at risk, attributing these threats to the work that he’s doing as president. What do you make of his reaction?
Well, we have to include the context that this is a man who has actually been shot at once. There was another foiled assassination attempt. The number of people in that room who were either also present at the rally where President Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, including one of my colleagues, or have had their own brushes with political violence ... It’s sort of remarkable and chilling to think about how many people in that room, this was not their first brush with political violence and it speaks to this moment we found ourselves in where unfortunately it feels like these events are becoming rather common.
My colleague Jim Puzzanghera [a Globe reporter in the Washington bureau], who was also with the dinner with me last night, and I recently wrote a story. Sort of a multimedia package for the Boston Globe where we collected examples of the threatening voicemails and phone calls that are just flooding congressional offices at what seemed to be record levels and we’re on pace to exceed that this year, according to the Capitol Police. And it is chilling to listen to the things Americans are saying to elected officials, to their staff, the casualness with which they threaten violence. And so, you know, President Trump is living in the same moment as all of us and seeing this very real uptick in people turning to violence to express their political beliefs. It’s a very dark moment in American history.
You’ve previously covered calls for increased security within the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, has been defunded for more than two months. Do you think this incident puts additional pressure on Congress?
There’s already a way out of this political stalemate in the works. And in typical fashion, it’s a very D.C. off-ramp, you know, they’re sort of using budget maneuverings to try to get this over the finish line. And of course the funding is caught up in a very different political dispute over President Trump’s immigration policy and Democrats seeking reforms over ICE, and thus withholding their vote for funding those agencies. There’s potentially a deal to fund the rest of DHS. It’s very complicated, but this moment then does highlight how perhaps those political fights feel a little distant from much of the mission of the Department of Homeland Security, which is in fact security and protection of the homeland.
Do we have any more information about the suspect at this time? What do we know about him and his possible motive for this attack?
Well, we know what Department of Justice officials and the president have told us, which is that based on what they’ve gathered from his devices, what they have gathered from preliminary interviews, they believe that his goal was to harm members of the administration, perhaps up to Trump himself. But what we know at this moment is rather limited. It’s sort of remarkable to me, just from covering the news for a while, it’s remarkable to me that he was taken into custody alive. Considering the number of armed individuals that were in that confined hallway, it’s remarkable there was not more loss of life.
You’ve been covering Washington for over a decade. Do you feel that the risk of violence is a bigger factor in your work now? Is this something that you’ve had to deal with before in your line of work?
I don’t know if there’s a person in Washington since Jan. 6 [2021] who hasn’t sort of ... reassessed their level of comfort. There have been other incidents leading up to it: there was the Gabby Gifford shooting where the Congresswoman was holding an event in her district in Arizona and a gunman opened fire and she was shot. There was the congressional baseball shooting, which I referenced with [Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives] Steve Scalise, where a gunman opened fire on a practice, leading up to the congressional baseball game. But for me, Jan. 6 really felt like a turning point where the rhetoric we had all sort of seen, perhaps been emailed or gotten on social media, it was the first time we were like oh, these individuals who are saying these things online actually may take action on them. I was not present in the Capitol that day, but I know a huge number of journalists and members of congressional staff and Congress who were. That one felt really real. And unfortunately, I think instead of sort of the pressure valve releasing a little bit since then, it only feels like things have gotten more intense. Certainly we had the Minnesota assassinations this past year. We had Charlie Kirk. This is, in this moment, something that I think anyone in office is grappling with. Political violence feels like it can turn real at any moment and it can be unpredictable. And Saturday night was certainly shocking. We have obviously never seen anything like that ... but at the same time, it feels a part of this building atmosphere.
