National Security

Jordan: Nation may be at point where president, top aides can’t be in same ballroom

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by Tara Suter - 04/28/26 10:09 AM ET

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by Tara Suter - 04/28/26 10:09 AM ET

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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Monday that the U.S. might be at a point where the president and other top officials cannot be in the same ballroom after Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“Are we at a point where it’s no longer smart to have the president, the vice president, the Speaker of the House — one, two, three, in line of presidential succession — and then most of the Cabinet all in the same hotel ballroom?” NewsNation’s Leland Vittert asked Jordan on his show “On Balance.”

“Yeah, we may be. I hope not. You hate for it to come to that. We’ll have to see, and there are people who understand security better than I do who may want to weigh in on this,” Jordan responded.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed rhetoric from notable Democrats for the shooting at the annual dinner.

“This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, by elected members of the Democrat party and even some in the media,” Leavitt told reporters Monday, referring to President Trump.

“This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment,” she said.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Monday that the security at the dinner appeared “lax.”

“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 Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

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