Monday 27th April, 2026
US President Donald Trump would have the world believe that Saturday evening’s shooting incident during the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner, at the Washington Hilton, was part of a plot to assassinate him. The event had just got underway when shots were heard in a lobby adjoining the ballroom. President Trump, his wife, Vice President J. D. Vance and other government politicians were rushed off the stage unhurt and escorted out of the hotel. Others ran for cover. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The gunman was arrested and identified as Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old from California.
President Trump lost no time in taking to Truth Social, calling the assailant a ‘very sick person’. One cannot but agree with him on this score. Nobody in his proper senses would ever have sought to harm a group of unarmed persons or penetrate a thick security cordon, carrying only a gun and knives, to assassinate the President of the United States. Just like the Californian man now in custody, those who carry out assassinations or order them are ‘very sick people’.
Ironically, President Trump, who ran away on Saturday, fearing a gunman, never misses an opportunity to brag that he had a foreign leader assassinated—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. It is ‘very sick people’ who have civilian centres, especially hospitals and schools, bombed in the name of war. During the opening hours of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, on 28 February, a missile struck a girls’ school, killing more than 170 people, most of whom were schoolgirls. There are also videos of brave Iranian doctors and nurses risking their lives to save babies in neonatal intensive care units during airstrikes on hospitals. Only ‘very sick people’ order such attacks, and try to justify them.
President Trump has said that on Saturday evening the assailant was taken down by “brave” Secret Service members, confirming that one officer was shot from a “very close” distance with a “very powerful” gun, but was saved by his bulletproof vest. Thankfully, the incident ended without bloodshed, and the Secret Service members no doubt acted bravely. But there was a serious lapse on their part; the gunman gained access to the Hilton lobby, without being detected, like in a Hollywood political action thriller.
Answering a question about why some people hoped to take his life, President Trump told the media at the White House that while he did not want to say he felt “honored” by having his life threatened, he knew people did not go after those who sat around and did nothing. He added that America was a strong country that was no longer the “laughing stock” of the world. Thus, he has tried to use Saturday’s shooting incident to boost his image, with the midterm elections drawing nearer.
Trump survived an assassination attempt during his re-election campaign in 2024, and that incident stood him in good stead; he made the most of the bullet that grazed his right ear to gain political mileage. Theatrics and rhetoric help gain popular support to win elections. Saturday’s shooting incident also seems to have benefited Trump politically, for it eclipsed a protest by those seeking justice for the victims of the Epstein sex scandal and legal action against all paedophiles who were in league with Epstein. The protesters were projecting images of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein onto the Washington Hilton, when the evening was shattered by gunfire. But for that incident, the protest and the images projected on the hotel would have received much publicity in the US and across the world. Today, the media is full of reports on the shooting incident and Trump’s braggadocio at a subsequent media briefing.
However, the Epstein files will not go away. Conflict in West Asia and promises to make America great again will not help make the damning files disappear. They will continue to dog Trump and there will be no escape for him.