Trump Uses Shooting at WHCA Dinner
to Trumpet New White House Ballroom
Capitol Inside April 26, 2026
President Donald Trump seized again on Sunday on the opportunity to promote the ballroom he's building at the White House after he and Vice-President JD Vance and cabinet members were rushed from the White House Correspondents Association dinner the night before after shots were fired in the hotel where it was being held.
Trump wasted no time pitching the ballroom at a hastily-arranged press briefing at the White House with FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a half-hour the incident at the Washington Hilton that's a 10-minute drive from the president's residence.
Trump portrayed the incident at the Hilton as the third attempt by assassins to take him out. Trump announced that the suspect had been apprehended after injuring a police officer at the hotel in a hallway outside the meeting room where the WHCA dinner was under way.
According to multiple reports today on X, Trump's team started giving MAGA loyalists ballroom talking points in group chats minutes before several shots were fired at the Hilton during the dinner. Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News a couple of hours before the incident that there would be "shots fired" with the speech that she'd composed for the president to deliver at the event.
The president praised law enforcement at the scene without addressing concerns about an apparent breakdown in his own security. The president and the members of the news briefing entourage - which included Vance, Leavitt, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and wife Melania Trump - appeared jovial at times despite the threat of violence that they'd just eluded. Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had failed to warn him about the dangers that come with being the American president.
"Nobody told me this was such a dangerous profession," Trump said. "I can't imagine that there's any profession that's more dangerous — but I love the country and I'm very proud."
While Trump ran the risk of insulting police, firefighters, members of the military and others who risk their lives every day they go to work, he gave critics more ammunition to use against him by touting a project that Democrats and no shortage of Republicans have decried as a monumental waste of taxpayer money.
But the president echoed the post-hotel shooting claims about the White House ballroom in a post on his Truth Social page on Sunday - saying that "every President for the last 150 years had been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom" be constructed at the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania.
"This event would never have happened with the Military Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House," Trump told reporters after the WHCA's cancellation."It cannot be built fast enough!
"While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World, The White House," the president added in the social media pitch.
But Trump lamented a lawsuit that's put construction of the White House ballroom on hold - claiming the citizen who initiated the civil action had no standing in the court where it was filed.
more to come ....
President Donald Trump used the incident at the WHCA dinner to promote the new ballroom that he's building at the White House. It's been a gift from heaven in terms of value as the distraction the Republicans have desperately needed. The triggerman wasn't much of an assassin if…
