There was chaos at the Washington Hilton Hotel when gunfire erupted one floor above the basement ballroom hosting the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, prompting a rapid security response.US President Donald Trump later explained that he wanted to see what was happening as Secret Service agents escorted him out of the venue after a gunman opened fire on Saturday night.Asked about his concerns after hearing the gunshots, Trump said he was “not worried.” He said, “I understand life. We live in a crazy world.”The US President said that his curiosity to see the situation firsthand may have slowed down the Secret Service’s efforts to quickly move him to safety.He said, “I wanted to see what was going on. I wasn’t going to make it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realize that maybe this was a bad problem, a different kind of problem, a bad problem – and different from the normal noise coming from the ballroom.”“I was surrounded by great people. And I probably asked them to take it a little more slowly. I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,'” the president recalled, adding that Secret Service agents repeatedly urged him to get down on the floor as they were escorting him off the stage.“I started walking. And he said, ‘Please go down, please go down to the floor.’ So I went down and the first lady went down, too,” Trump said.A California man has been charged with vandalizing a dinner attended by President Donald Trump in what authorities have described as a shocking attack at a Washington hotel.Administration officials said it appeared the suspect in Saturday night’s incident was targeting Trump and other senior figures at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which would be the third attempt on the president’s life in the past two years.After a brief shootout with agents, the suspect was taken into custody at the scene.Trump later shared photos showing the suspect lying face down and shirtless on the hotel’s carpeted floor, handcuffed.Trump, speaking at a hastily arranged late-night news conference at the White House, said he initially thought the sound was a tray falling, but later realized it was gunfire.He said he expected the annual gala, hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association, to be rescheduled within a month, and described the hotel venue as “not a particularly secure” facility as questions arise over the president’s security protocols.
