Geoff Bennett:
And Liz joins us now, along with Lisa Desjardins, our congressional correspondent.
You were both at the Correspondents’ Dinner this past weekend when this all unfolded. Walk us through what you experienced.
Liz, you first.
Liz Landers:
I heard the gunshots. And at our table, we hit the decks. We got under the table pretty quickly. And I started recording on my phone. I think that the instinct to be a reporter and document what you’re seeing kicked in pretty quickly, so got some of that video.
And it was scary to be there and to not know what was happening. And once we saw that the room was sort of stable and that the Cabinet secretaries had at least left, Amna and I tried to get out of the room to get cell phone service so that we could start doing reporting.
Outside of the ballroom, I ran into a White House official who was able to give us some preliminary information about the status of the president, vice president, and the first lady at that moment. And then when we heard the White House Correspondents’ Association president, Weijia, announce that the president was going to have a press briefing, I thought, OK, I have to get down to the White House for this.
And so…
Lisa Desjardins:
And she said in 30 minutes.
Liz Landers:
And she said in 30 minutes. Exactly.
So I thought, how am I going to do that in this amount of time? The streets all around the Hilton were locked down. I found a scooter and was actually able to hop on a scooter, get down to my apartment to grab my credential to get into the White House, scooted down to the White House and did make it in time for the president’s briefing.
Geoff Bennett:
And a photographer outside snapped that picture of you.
Liz Landers:
Yes.
Geoff Bennett:
So, Lisa, what was going through your mind?
Lisa Desjardins:
It’s an incredible picture.
Liz’s table was right on the aisle. Mine was one row back from that. Both of us were sort of closer to the back of the room, which is closer to where the shooting was up the stairs. So I too heard the shots, but I heard also the crash of dishes.
A lot of people were confused. Was this really a shooting? Was this some crashing of dishes by a waiter? But, instantly, I think training kicked in. And just like Liz is saying, the professionalism and journalism, the training that we have, and also my experience of January 6 really kicked in, which was I think I know what to need to do and I need to make sure I know where all the exits are.
Make sure the team that I’m with is able to leave this room safely. I need to watch law enforcement. Are they yelling? They weren’t yelling. That made me think, OK, there’s not a threat in the room. Now I can do my reporting.
I talked to several members of Congress. They were mostly worried about their spouses. The people most nervous in the room were those non-lawmaker spouses. And I think, even in this moment, we should expect security at almost any number of events on the Capitol to change because of the people in that room and what they experienced.
Geoff Bennett:
And, Liz, today, I know you have been speaking with your Secret Service contacts about presidential protection protocol. What have they been telling you?
Liz Landers:
I spoke with two Secret Service agents today, and that agency has been under enormous scrutiny since the Butler assassination attempt happened against President Trump.
But both of these agents said that they felt that the agency and the training kicked in for what happened, for the incident, the shooting that happened on Saturday. One of the points that people have been asking about is the time, how long the president stayed on the stage there on Saturday.
One of the agents that I spoke with said that the president, who said this in the “60 Minutes” interview, told the agents, wait a second, I want to see what was happening. And this agent made the point to me that if they evacuated the president off the stage, and it had just been trays crashing, that would have sent panic throughout the room.
So that was one of the, I think, criticisms that the Secret Service is going to be answering. And I do think that lawmakers on the Hill are asking for more answers and reporters are too.
Geoff Bennett:
How is all of this landing on Capitol Hill, Lisa?
Lisa Desjardins:
We should expect hearings very soon, including with Secret Service and others. But there’s also a lot of questions about exactly who was there in the room. It wasn’t just the president and first lady at risk, of course.
Let’s look at the line of succession and who was in the room. Highlighted here, you see in yellow, those are people who were in the room. You see right there, four — five out of the first six in the line of succession. And it wasn’t just there. Let’s look at the rest of the Cabinet in the room.
These are those confirmed by the Senate. You can see most of the Cabinet, most of the line of succession was in that room. That’s not unique, but it is unique for a hotel ballroom like that. So there’s double concern, especially that the suspected gunman seemed not to be all that well-trained, but did make it that far.
Still, there was a buffer between him and the president ultimately, but there are a lot of questions about this kind of event there. Also, Republicans are raising the idea — they say this is reason to fund the president’s proposal for that big ballroom by the White House.
That is controversial. Now, this was a private event. This is not a kind of event that would ever happen at the White House. So there are real questions about how exactly that would work.
Geoff Bennett:
And what’s next for the White House in all of this?
Liz Landers:
Well, we got a statement from a senior White House official earlier today, saying that the president does stand by the leadership of the Secret Service.
But, nevertheless, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is going to convene a meeting early this week with the White House operations team, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security. All of those leadership heads will be at the White House to discuss how to protect the president for major events going forward.
America celebrates the 250th anniversary of this country. The president is supposed to attend a number of those events this summer. There’s also the World Cup happening here in the U.S. So the president will be attending several large events, the White House saying that the president does have confidence in the Secret Service, but still taking these precautions, and Karoline Leavitt saying also from the podium today that security changes are never out of the question.
So we may see some changes to how the president moves and interacts in some of these political events.
Geoff Bennett:
Liz Landers, Lisa Desjardins, our thanks to you and the entire politics team.
Lisa Desjardins:
Thanks, Geoff.
