WHCA Chair Weijia Jiang Gets First Question in Trump’s Post-Shooting Presser: ‘What Was Going Through Your Mind?’

CBS News Senior White House Correspondent and White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang asked the first question at President Donald Trump’s press conference in the aftermath of shots being fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The annual confab of politicos and journalists erupted in chaos Saturday evening when a gunman fired several shots. Secret Service whisked the president and First Lady Melania Trump out of the room, and all Cabinet members were safely evacuated as well.

The gunman, identified by multiple outlets as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, was apprehended and is in custody.

Trump began by thanking Jiang as WHCA president, saying she had done a “fantastic job” with the event, which had been a “beautiful evening” until it was interrupted.

“And we’re going to reschedule,” said Trump. “And after that, it’s very tough for her to ask a killer question, right? But you have done a fantastic job.”

“Mr. President, I appreciate it,” said Jiang. “As you mentioned, it all happened so quickly and I wonder — especially because unfortunately, you have experience with these sorts of threats — in that moment, when you realize there was a threat, and [Secret] Service agents were telling us to get down. Can you describe what was going through your mind, how you were feeling in that moment?”

Replied Trump:

It’s a very good question. Actually, it was — it’s always shocking when something like this happens — it happened to me, a little bit — and that never changes. The fact we’re sitting right next to each other — the first lady, am I right? And I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down. I’ve heard that many times, and it was a pretty loud noise, and it was from quite far away. He hadn’t reached the area at all. They really got him, but so it was quite far away.

But it was a gun. And some people really understood that pretty quickly. Other people didn’t. I was watching to see what was happening. Probably should have gone down even faster. Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened. I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, “that’s a bad noise.”

And, uh, we were whisked away, along with other people, but we were really whisked away. And again, the performance of the Secret Service and the police, all of the law enforcement, I thought was really good. So it was very quick. There wasn’t a lot of time to be thinking, because it was a matter of seconds before we were out the door and gone into an area.

We very much — and you wanted to too, you very much wanted to continue it, because I don’t like to let these sick people, these thugs, these horrible, horrible people, change the fabric of our life, change the course of what we do. So we held out. You were there. We held out right ’til the end.

But they didn’t want to take a chance. And I understand it was protocol, but we’re going to be doing one, hopefully within the next thirty days or sooner. And I am ready, willing, and able.

Trump wrapped his reply by commenting that the speech he had planned to give was “rough” and probably would not have struck the right tone in light of the night’s events:

And I was all set to really rip it. And I said to my people, this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made, if I said — so I’ll have to save it. I don’t know if I can ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’m going to be probably very nice. I’ll be very boring the next time, but we’re going to have a great event. And you did a fantastic job. Thank you very much.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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