00:26What I first noticed was this
00:29absolute rush of waiters and people running down this center aisle towards
00:35the stage where President Trump was sitting. My Reuters colleagues and I we
00:40were sitting actually very close to that stage and so you would just hear the
00:43ruffle of civil wear and glasses start shattering and it almost seemed like a
00:48stampede was running towards the president's table. That is when I turned
00:53and I was probably only about 30 yards away from where President Trump was
00:58sitting and you saw these US Secret Service agents getting on top of the
01:04president. He almost looked to be on his knees behind the table and then they
01:08slowly started ushering him out as the federal agents with long tactical guns
01:15started to surround the president ushering him off stage.
01:29Well thank you very much that was very unexpected but incredibly acted upon by
01:39Secret Service and law enforcement and...
01:44President Trump, did the suspect say anything or was he wearing anything that would
01:49allege some type of motive here?
01:51Nothing, no. I mean he was a guy who looked pretty evil when he was down, you know.
01:57We then had this very surreal scene where we were told that President Trump was
02:02going to be giving a press briefing down the road about a mile away at the White House and so
02:08a lot of the reporters in Washington DC and there are a lot of them were at this dinner and
02:13a lot of
02:14them who cover the White House and so me and others started hopping on bikes and other people were running
02:19all the way to the White House because the roads were completely shut down because the president and
02:25these top level officials were trying to leave this area when we were told that the dinner was no longer
02:31going to continue. So there were a lot of sweaty reporters running to the White House waiting to
02:37hear from President Trump and I was in the front row of that press briefing and it was also another
02:43surreal moment with the president standing with the top levels of the US government, the defense secretary,
02:50the secretary of state, the FBI director.
03:09We have heard loud bangs but frankly we were sitting very close to the stage so it was difficult to
03:17make
03:17anything of them. For us the biggest sign was we saw secret service agents rush through the doors and
03:26towards the stage and towards the president. That was when everybody and at the same time everybody
03:34started ducking under the tables, take cover. That was when it was clear that something very odd,
03:41something something very different was happening.
04:00I have been to many White House correspondents dinners. Obviously we have never ever seen anything
04:06like this before. Secret service was very quick. President Trump was evacuated within,
04:14President Trump was whisked away from the stage within just a few seconds. We've also seen Vice
04:21President J.D. Vance being evacuated by his own team as well. It was an incredible moment of
04:29confusion and shock. People remained under the tables, by the side of the tables, just trying to take cover
04:39while they tried to figure out what was exactly going on. It was the most eventful White House
04:50Correspondents' Dinner I have ever been. I'm sure that's the case for everybody else.
05:10The president was taken to a room just off stage where he stayed for some 30 minutes for a very,
05:19very long time as he essentially tried to regroup and essentially do the same speech that he was
05:25going to give the whole time and do it live. He really insisted many times that the speech go on,
05:32that the event go on, and that was the intention of a number of people there. However, the security
05:38agents, the secret service, they actually convinced the president not to do that, to end the event.
05:44And so eventually the event was cancelled.
06:16.
06:21.
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