What I Saw on Saturday Night

On Saturday night I (Steve Moore) attended the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Every time I enter this hotel, I recall that this was the same Hilton where Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed 45 years ago. I walked through the same entrance where that assassin’s bullet came within an inch of killing Reagan.

This is an event for the self-absorbed and self-important Washington DC glitterati to see and be seen.

I had anticipated a very long security line and about an hour wait to enter the hotel. I brought my paper ticket and my passport identification.

To my surprise the security was lax, to put it lightly. Wearing my tux, I walked in the front door by flashing the paper ticket. There was no code to be scanned and I never once was asked for my ID.

The room was packed at 7pm when President Trump entered to shallow applause. What shocked me was that, after the National Anthem and military color guard, Trump and the First Lady sat for dinner front and center in front of 2500 people. That didn’t strike me as safe or advisable. For a sniper, God forbid, it seemed he was a sitting duck.

It also struck me that the President, the VP and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were all in attendance. I am told five of the six in succession to the presidency were there.

About 15 minutes into the dinner, I was chatting with the Wall Street Journal reporters at my table when all hell broke loose. The Secret Service suddenly charged in with pistols and assault rifles and all of a sudden I heard two loud booms, like a bomb going off. There was screaming and we all ducked down and many ducked under their tables.

I looked toward the President and he was surrounded by the Secret Service. They pulled him out of his seat and shoved him toward the exit. My heart sank and I panicked when I saw Trump appear to stumble to the ground. You can see that on the video. Oh my God, I gasped, in horror. Trump has been hit.

I was seated at the table next to Speaker Johnson when the Secret Service agents began yelling: “Where is the Speaker?” His seatmates had pulled him under the table. He was ushered out.

For about five minutes it was a frightening environment, although people stayed mostly calm. I was impressed with the reporters at our table who were instantly filing stories and taking cell phone photos of the pandemonium even as the safety of the situation was still unresolved.

Everyone stood in mostly stunned silence and we were told a lone gunman had been taken down and that one agent was shot.

Trump was right in praising the agents on site were amazing in keeping us safe and restoring order.

But this was clearly a major security breakdown on multiple levels. It was easier to get into the Hilton to see the president and to get 30 feet from him than to attend a Wizards basketball game down the street.

Peter Girnus 🦅
@gothburz
·
2h
I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you’d shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That’s editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was “A Free Press for a Free People.” The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent’s vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That’s priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said “I just wanna go home.” She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That’s the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador’s residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

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