WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was somberly contemplative and unusually conciliatory after confronting what he saw as a third attempt on his life in less than two years. He suggested that his personal politics had made him a repeated target, but he also called for unity and bipartisan healing in an increasingly violent world.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. Happened to me, a little bit. And that never changes," a subdued Trump told reporters in a hastily organized news conference at the White House late Saturday.
Only a short time before, a man with guns and knives tried to rush past the security perimeter inside the Washington hotel where the Republican president was about to address the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Authorities are trying to determine what happened and why. A suspect was taken into custody and identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California.
Trump said he himself was undoubtedly the target. The presidency is “a dangerous profession,” he said, noting that violence associated with politics had escalated in the U.S. and around the world. ”No country is immune."
Trump suggested it was a sign of how successful his presidency has been.
“I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you the most impactful people — the people who do the most, take a look at Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said. He added: “The people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much.”
The president called for Americans to put aside their differences and unite — a break from his usual gleefully combative political tack.
“We have to, we have to resolve our differences,” Trump said. “I will say, you had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals and progressives. Those words are interchangeable, perhaps, but maybe they’re not. But yet everybody in that room, big crowd, record-setting crowd, there was a record-setting group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and coming together. I watched, I watched, and I was very, very impressed by that.”
Trump says he would have changed course and made ‘a speech of love’
The president kept up a similar tone during a Sunday interview with Fox News Channel, calling the dinner “an evening where a lot of people got together.”
“I saw some Democrats, as we were leaving — and they were generally hostile — and last night they were waving to me. Politicians, congressmen, senators. They were waving and saying, ‘Great going’ and ‘Hello,’” Trump said. “The place was just coming together. It was very nice to see.”
He also said he had originally planned to give a speech blistering the media. "I was gonna really rip it last night,” Trump said of his initial plan.
But immediately after the incident, when there was some thought that the event would carry on, Trump said he wanted to change course with remarks that were “gonna be much different. It’ll be a speech of love."
“But I didn’t get a chance to do that,” Trump said. "Probably I was better off, if I didn’t. I don’t know.”
There was still some of his old edge, especially when he spoke about the suspect: “I hated a guy like this — a sick, bad person — I hated somebody like that changing the course of our country.”
Echoes of what Trump said after 2024 incidents
Trump has called for national unity before, only to quickly pivot.
He told Fox News that what happened Saturday proved the necessity of the White House ballroom he's building. Trump also wrote on social media that the attack “would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!” And he scoffed at a legal challenge against the construction that led to the demolition of the White House's East Wing, calling it the “ridiculous ballroom lawsuit.”
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After the shooting in 2024 during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Trump was wounded in the ear and a supporter was killed, the president strode into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee two days later. That same week, he gave a speech featured a softer and deeply personal message, drawing directly from his brush with death.
“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly," Trump said then. “As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart.”
Such calls proved to be very short lived.
Trump later in that same speech veered back into his trademark combativeness. He repeated false claims about the 2020 election was stolen from him and assertions that Democratic President Joe Biden had done “unthinkable” damage to the nation.
The pattern played out anew in September 2024, when Secret Service agents fired at a man who was armed with a rifle as Trump played golf at his resort club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s golf partner when the second incident occurred, described Trump's initial reaction as “courageous and stoic.” It was not long before Trump was talking constantly about “radical" Democrats and “left-wing lunatics.” He branded Ryan Routh, the man sentenced to life in prison for trying to kill him, a “sick” individual.
This time, the first lady was with Trump
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said increasingly polarizing rhetoric was partly to blame for so many violent incidents around Trump.
“There have been threats against leadership for a very long time. Years and years and years. That’s not new,” Blanche said on ABC’s “This Week.” “There is something unique about the threats against President Trump and his Cabinet that is disgusting.”
Unlike the first two incidents, however, the latest one occurred with first lady Melania Trump by his side. The president said on Sunday that his wife “was doing great.”
That followed the previous evening, when Trump described the first lady as being rattled but also “very cognizant, I think, of what happened.”
“I think she knew immediately," Trump said. “She was saying ‘It’s a bad noise.’”
He added, “It was a rather traumatic experience for her."
No change to British monarch's upcoming American trip
Buckingham Palace said Sunday that the U.S. visit by King Charles III will go ahead as planned despite the incident at the correspondents’ dinner.
The announcement came after discussions between American and British officials on questions of security. The trip, an intricately planned affair, is meant to showcase the strength of the trans-Atlantic “special relationship.’’
“Following discussions on both sides of the Atlantic through the day, and acting on advice of government, we can confirm the state visit by their majesties will proceed as planned,″ Buckingham Palace said in a statement. “The king and queen are most grateful to all those who have worked at pace to ensure this remains the case and are looking forward to the visit getting underway tomorrow.’’
Charles and Queen Camilla are scheduled to begin their four-day trip on Monday, when they will have tea with the president and first lady Melania Trump.
Trump told Fox News Channel's “The Sunday Briefing” that "we’re going to have a great time and he represents his nation like nobody else can do it.’’
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