ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl on Sunday described a surprising early-morning phone call from President Donald Trump in the aftermath of an assassination attempt at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Secret Service agents evacuated Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other senior administration officials from the Washington Hilton hotel’s ballroom after the alleged gunman, Cole Allen, exchanged gunfire with the Secret Service during the event. Karl told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos about the unexpected call from Trump, who was allegedly one the targets of Allen.
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“My phone rang shortly after 7 a.m. My landline, George, actually a number that few people call, and it was President Trump calling,” Karl said. “He was, he said at first he was calling to see if I was OK with what happened last night and then he reiterated many of the things he said in his press conference last night, emphasizing the unity that he felt in that moment that he felt at the dinner before the shooting and certainly after with the people who reached out to him.”
“He said absolutely, and he was quite firm about this, that dinner must be rescheduled, it must be rescheduled,” Karl continued. “He knows that I was a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and worked with him on a dinner that never actually happened back during COVID, and he was saying we’ve got to get this dinner back on. It has to happen.”
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign, expressed a desire to head back out and give his planned speech, but he returned to the White House after the Secret Service invoked “protocol,” where he gave a press conference in the White House briefing room.
Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, will appear in court Monday to be arraigned on charges of using a firearm in a violent crime and assaulting a federal officer. He allegedly sent a manifesto to family members in which he referred to himself as the “friendly federal assassin” and declared he was targeting Trump administration officials.
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