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The White House Correspondents Dinner is a really odd institution. It's a bit like a sort of nerd Oscars. President Trump has skipped it in the past and this time he went which is good. But then, of course, it was thrown off course by gunfire. So, just tell me what happened. Well, a gunman tried to get to the president and apparently shoot him and perhaps other senior officials. Police tackled the gunman as he ran past a security checkpoint and before he could get to the ballroom where the president and the journalists were. But there were shots fired. Everybody dived under the tables. The 31-year-old shooter, who's been
identified as Cole Thomas Allen from Torrance, California, was apprehended and is due in court today facing federal charges. The president noted at a press conference afterwards that the Secret Service acted speedily and he was fast. He was like a blur on tape. It was very impressive the way they got him. They drew those guns so fast. There's a nasty historical echo here which is the Hilton Hotel where this assassination attempt happened was the site of an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. So, you say the security services acted speedily,
but this sounds like a massive security failure. It was, and it's hard to argue with that. There'll be lots of questions now, and have been lots of questions already about the Secret Service and where the protocols were followed. Um, the gunman himself posted a kind of manifesto which he sort of boasted about how lack security was at the Hilton. In order to get into the lobby, all anyone had to do was to flash a ticket. But I would say after every event like this, people bash the Secret Service. They have an incredibly tough job. America is a very large country,
350 million people with the usual quotient of crazy people. But one big difference of course, which is there are approximately half a billion guns held by civilians. Uh and it's extremely hard to protect even a president from that. And also it's important to remember that um an agent or an officer was injured in the line of duty here. So yes, there were problems with security, but I think people are perhaps expecting an impossible standard here. The president, who has a genius for turning every adversity to his advantage, said that the attempt was yet another
reason why his great big new ballroom needed to be built at the White House. It's actually a larger room and it's a much more secure. It's got it's drone proof. If it's bulletproof glass, we need the ballroom. That's why secret service, that's why the military are demanding it. I think it's important to underline that the president, you know, yet again displayed some real courage here. John, you and I have spoken on previous Mondays after assassination attempts. This is the third probable attempt on Trump's life. Is political violence in America becoming more commonplace?
Well, as you say, Rosie, three attempts on Donald Trump's life, various other plots that have been foiled over the past year. We've had the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota. Does feel like we talk about this a lot. And if you look at the polling, 85% of Americans think that political violence is increasing in America. I don't know whether that's actually right. It's an incredibly hard thing to measure. In the aftermath of this, of course, it feels true. But if you take a bit of historical perspective,
I think it's unarguable there's less political violence now than there was in the 1960s or the 1970s where there were, you know, assassinations and even bombings. But I think there's partly a media phenomenon now. You know, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, millions of Americans instantly watched on their phones. And I just think this sort of political violence because of the media environment feels more present um than it ever has done before. Again, if you look at the numbers, 80% of Americans say political violence is always unacceptable. Um
that means there are some who think that political violence could be justified in some circumstances, but hardly anybody thinks that it's okay to try and assassinate the president in this way. So I think it's one of these things that it's possible to take a feeling that feels true and sort of exaggerate it. So I want to be careful not to do that. You've already said that Trump is very brilliant at turning any adversity into a boost for him. We know that his popularity is low at the moment, not least because of the conflict in Iran. He's got the midterms coming up. What
will this event do to his popularity? I don't expect it to change his approval ratings much. I think there might be a short-term boost in his popularity as shy Republicans who are not big fans of his current policies become a bit more willing to answer pollsters questions. There's a nerdy term for this which is partisan non-response bias. So you might see a little uptick there. But what really underpins presidential approval? It's things like people's perceptions of the state of the economy. Um the Iran war is not popular. So I'd be pretty surprised if this had a lasting
effect. But that's not to say that, you know, it doesn't matter. I think there is a sort of real thing that America has to wrestle with here. you know, keeping the president completely safe from any risk would mean having him never leave the White House or interact with people. Um, that would obviously lead to him being a sort of remote out of touch figure, whoever the president is. And the more this kind of thing happens, the likelier that system of government becomes, which was would be very bad for America. And just one sort of parting thought, this is perhaps
another reminder to everyone to sort of dial down the rhetoric about American democracy being in existential peril. I think we at the economists tend to be pretty careful with how we use our words and I think that's a good thing. John, thank you very much for talking to me. Thanks, Rosie.
