Gunfire at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

No location for a shooting should surprise anyone

By now you’ve heard. There was gunfire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC. The president and vice president were rushed out of a ballroom full of reporters — many of whom have covered war zones and heard gunfire up close.

In the first minutes after it happened, a lot of those same reporters struggled to get information out. The ballroom sits a couple of floors underground. Cell service is awful.

As a news anchor, I can tell you — that’s maddening.

Here’s what we know so far.

The gunfire appears to have come from law enforcement after a man charged a security checkpoint, trying to force his way toward the ballroom. He didn’t get far. He was tackled before reaching the room. Reports say he wasn’t hit by gunfire, and may not have fired any shots himself.

But he was armed. Handguns. A shotgun. Several knives.

Draw your own conclusions about what he intended to do if he got inside.

He’s been identified as Cole Allen of Torrance, California. As of Saturday evening, there’s no word on a motive, and no clear indication of who he may have been targeting — the president, cabinet members, or the press.

One uniformed Secret Service agent was struck in the back of his vest and taken to the hospital as a precaution. He’s expected to be okay.

Some attendees say security didn’t feel especially tight. There were magnetometers at the ballroom entrance, but not at the hotel itself. That’s going to raise questions.

The good news — and it matters — is that no one was killed. Law enforcement moved fast. They contained it.

But within minutes, the other thing started.

The conspiracy theories.

On social media, claims that it was staged. That the gunman wasn’t real. That he was an actor. It didn’t take long.

We’ve seen this before — mostly from the right. Now you’re seeing it from the left, too.

These are sad, disturbing, exhausting times.

I wasn’t planning to watch the dinner. I’ve said before I have a problem with journalists hosting, as guest of honor, a man who has called for their arrests and questioned whether it should even be legal for them to report on him. But the reporters in that room made their own choices. They were there to do their jobs.

President Trump says the event will be rescheduled in 30 days. That’s not his call. It belongs to the White House Correspondents’ Association.

And it will almost certainly happen.

One hopes, next time, the security matches the stakes.