In the immediate aftermath of the latest possible attempt on Donald Trump’s life, much of the fast-flowing information was wrong – an irony given it came from the hundreds of reporters and newsroom executives who were inside the Washington ballroom when the first shots rang out.
The alleged assassin was dead, we were told by some, when he actually wasn’t. Cole Tomas Allen was not even shot during the incident, let alone killed by Secret Service agents or police. We were told the 31-year-old Californian teacher had got into the same room President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and cabinet members were in.
That wasn’t quite right, either, although he did get far too close for comfort. The alleged gunman in fact charged a security checkpoint in a lobby just outside the ballroom doors before being tackled and apprehended.
We were also told the correspondents dinner would proceed despite the extraordinary scenes which had just unfolded. Again, that was wrong. The dinner was postponed and Trump rushed back to the safety of the White House.
It is early days in the latest major security event to rock US politics, and it will take much more than a few hours for the full facts to emerge. We still don’t even know for sure whether Trump was the target, or someone else in the room. But amid the blur of conflicting information, there are at the very least eerie similarities between the Washington Hilton scare and the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt which wounded Trump and killed a member of the crowd, Corey Comperatore.
Unsurprisingly, the fallout didn’t quite capture the same attention as the incident itself. Much was made of the unbelievable near miss of a bullet passing through Trump’s right ear in that Pennsylvania field, but the subsequent investigation sank like a stone. In the wake of this weekend’s near-miss, it’s worth revisiting the damning findings of the Butler probe.
In short, the Senate Judiciary Committee found the Secret Service failed to implement security measures that could have prevented the assassination attempt at Trump’s campaign rally. One of the most unsettling revelations in a “cascade of failures” was that senior Secret Service officials were made aware of a threat to Trump before the rally but did not pass it down the chain, or to local law enforcement personnel involved in site security plans.
While the threat did not relate to the rally or the gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, its existence shone a light on serious problems with communication between the many organisations charged with the president’s safety, including the Secret Service, local police and FBI.
Republican senator Chuck Grassley said the investigation also highlighted a series of procedural and planning errors, including misallocation of resources, lack of training and pervasive communication failures, all of which contributed to an unsecure environment.
Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the director of the Secret Service 10 days after the shooting, and six Secret Service agents received suspensions of up to six weeks.
Has much changed since? Black and white security footage from Sunday’s incident at the Washington Hotel suggests those charged with protecting Trump, his inner circle and media elite at the dinner were caught on the hop by Allen, in the same way they were nearly two years ago by Crooks.
The teacher managed to rush through the security area without being stopped in the first instance. He was eventually taken down after exchanging gunfire with the Secret Service, including one agent who was shot but survived because he was wearing a protective vest.
How did someone with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives even get to that point? It is as astonishing as Crooks being able to crawl onto the roof of a building to take his shots at Trump in 2024.
Grilled by reporters, interim Washington DC police chief Jeffery Carroll said there was preliminary information that Allen was a guest at the hotel. The hotel was closed to the public beginning at 2pm Saturday US time ahead of the dinner which began at 8pm, according to AP.
Questions will also be asked about why all stages of security screening did not take place in a temporary facility outside the hotel building, rather than in a lobby just near the ballroom where everyone was gathered. The gunfire exchange was so close to Trump and his team that the sound was clearly visible to everyone inside the room, including the president.
Connor Stringer, the chief Washington correspondent for the UK Telegraph, told readers entry was easy: “Upon arriving at the Hilton, I had remarked to a colleague just how light the measures had been. No ID checks. No pat-downs on entry. A simple flash of a cardboard ticket, which was the exact same from last year’s event, was all that was needed to enter.” MAGA loyalist Kari Lake, said on X that security was incredibly lax. “Upon entering, nobody asked to visibly INSPECT my ticket nor asked for my photo identification,” she wrote.
For his part, Trump was full of praise for the officials who sprang into action. The situation was “incredibly acted upon” by the Secret Service and police, Trump said, adding he would be the first to complain if he felt there was a problem given it’s his life on the line. But like the aftermath of Butler, an inevitable review into this weekend’s events might not support Trump’s view that all went well outside the ballroom, or inside it.
Footage from the event shows the process of getting Trump out of harm’s way was far from smooth. Vice-President Vance was dragged off the stage about 15 seconds before Trump, who remained for slightly longer and then fell as he was being moved to safety. Vance was off the stage before heavily armed agents swarmed the podium and surrounded Trump.
Asked at the White House press briefing room whether he was concerned how long it took for some high-ranking officials to be evacuated from the room, Trump again backed his protective detail. “They acted very quickly,” he said.
The last time shots rang out at a presidential function at the Washington Hilton, the commander in chief wasn’t so lucky. Ronald Reagan was walking out of the hotel on March 30, 1981, when John Hinckley Jr fired a gun in the hope of impressing actor Jodie Foster, hitting and wounding the president, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, police officer Thomas Delahanty and the president’s press secretary, James Brady. The death of Brady in 2014 was ruled a homicide as a result of the injuries he sustained 33 years earlier.
Keeping Trump alive is a dangerous job, and few of us would have the guts or skills to do it. But when the stakes are as high as the life or death of a president who leads a deeply divided, fragile nation, it’s on those charged with protecting him to learn from the past and get it right.
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Bevan Shields is a senior writer, and former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.