National Security

Johnson: Security looked ‘lax’ at WHCA dinner

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by Tara Suter - 04/27/26 11:31 AM ET

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by Tara Suter - 04/27/26 11:31 AM ET

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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Monday that the security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner appeared “lax,” recounting the night during a Fox News interview on Monday morning.

“I can tell you, from a layman’s perspective, it did look a little lax in terms of, as everyone’s now noted, getting into the building. Now, we all came in, Cabinet secretaries, government officials, with their own details, we come in the back, so, I didn’t see the magnetometers and all that, but it doesn’t sound like it was sufficient,” Johnson said on “America’s Newsroom.”

On Saturday evening, a man exchanged gunfire with law enforcement at the yearly White House Correspondents’ dinner at the Washington Hilton. President Trump and first lady Melania Trump were evacuated, with journalists and government officials left shaken.

The gunman shot a Secret Service agent and was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives, per police. The agent was hit on his bulletproof vest and was expected to recover, administration officials said.

While the suspect made it through an initial line of security, he was apprehended before reaching the ballroom where hundreds of guests were gathered. He had apparently booked a room in the hotel prior to Saturday night’s festivities.

Multiple Republicans have seized on the incident to pressure Democrats to pass a comprehensive funding package for the Department of Homeland Security and to drop their opposition to Trump’s White House ballroom, which the president says would be a safer venue for major events in Washington.

Johnson said on Sunday afternoon that Trump is “strongest in times of crisis” after the gunman interrupted the dinner.

“Many in the media are discussing how President Trump was ‘so remarkably calm’ and ‘in control’ through the events last night. That is the mark [of] a great leader, and it defines who Donald Trump is. … I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the past several years, and he is at his strongest in times of crisis and turmoil,” Johnson wrote in a post on the social platform X.

“It is a primary reason why his time in office is so historic. Adding to that history, he has now survived a third assassination attempt,” the Speaker added.

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