Liz Landers and Lisa Desjardins describe chaos at Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

[0:00] And Liz joins us now along with Lisa Desjardins, our congressional correspondent. [0:04] You were both at the Correspondents' Dinner this past weekend when this all unfolded. [0:08] Walk us through what you experienced. Liz, you first. [0:11] I heard the gunshots, and at our table, we hit the decks, we got under the table pretty quickly, [0:18] and I started recording on my phone. I think that the instinct to be a reporter and document what [0:22] you're seeing kicked in pretty quickly, so got some of that video, and it was scary to be there [0:30] and to not know what was happening. And once we saw that the room was sort of stable and that the [0:37] cabinet secretaries had at least left, Amna and I tried to get out of the room to get cell phone [0:43] service so that we could start doing reporting. Outside of the ballroom, I ran into a White House [0:47] official who was able to give us some preliminary information about the status of the president, [0:52] vice president, and the first lady at that moment. And then when we heard the White House [0:57] Correspondents' Association, President Ouija, announced that the president was going to have [1:01] a press briefing, I thought, OK, I have to get down to the White House for this. [1:06] And she said in 30 minutes. [1:07] And she said in 30 minutes, exactly. So I thought, how am I going to do that in this amount of time? [1:12] The streets all around the Hilton were locked down. I found a scooter and was actually able to [1:17] hop on a scooter, get down to my apartment to grab my credential to get into the White House, [1:23] scooted down to the White House, and did make it in time for the president's briefing. [1:25] And the photographer outside snapped that picture of you. So, Lisa, what was going through your mind? [1:30] It's an incredible picture. Liz's table was right on the aisle. Mine was one row back from that. [1:34] Both of us were sort of closer to the back of the room, which is closer to where the shooting was [1:39] up the stairs. So I, too, heard the shots, but I heard also the crash of dishes. A lot of people [1:43] were confused. Was this really a shooting? Was this some crashing of dishes by a waiter? But, [1:49] you know, instantly, I think training kicked in. And just like Liz is saying, [1:53] the professionalism and journalism, the training that we have, and also my experience of January [1:57] 6th really kicked in, which was, I think I know what you need to do. And I need to make sure I [2:01] know where all the exits are and make sure the team that I'm with is able to leave this room safely. [2:06] I need to watch law enforcement. Are they yelling? They weren't yelling. That made me think, okay, [2:09] there's not a threat in the room. Now I can do my reporting. I talked to several members of Congress. [2:15] They were mostly worried about their spouses. The people most nervous in the room were those [2:19] non-lawmaker spouses. And I think even in this moment, we should expect security at almost any [2:25] number of events on the Capitol to change because of the people in that room and what they experienced. [2:30] And Liz, today, I know you've been speaking with your Secret Service contacts about presidential [2:34] protection protocol. What have they been telling you? [2:37] I spoke with two Secret Service agents today, and that agency has been under enormous scrutiny since [2:41] the Butler assassination attempt happened against President Trump. But both of these agents said [2:47] that they felt that the agency and the training kicked in for what happened for the incident, [2:53] the shooting that happened on Saturday. One of the points that people have been asking about is [2:57] the time, how long the president stayed on the stage there on Saturday. One of the agents that I spoke [3:03] with said that the president, who said this in the 60 Minutes interview, told the agents, wait a second, [3:10] I want to see what was happening. And this agent made the point to me that if they evacuated the [3:13] president off the stage and it had just been trays crashing, that would have sent panic throughout [3:18] the room. So that was one of the, I think, criticisms that the Secret Service is going [3:24] to be answering. And I do think that, you know, lawmakers on the Hill are asking for more answers [3:29] and reporters are too. [3:30] How is all of this landing on Capitol Hill, Lisa? [3:33] We should expect hearings very soon, including with Secret Service and others. [3:37] But there's also a lot of questions about exactly who was there in the room. It wasn't just [3:40] the president and first lady at risk, of course. Let's look at the line of succession and who was [3:45] in the room. Highlighted here, you see in yellow, those are people who were in the room. You see [3:50] right there, five out of the first six in the line of succession. And it wasn't just there. Let's look [3:55] at the rest of the cabinet in the room. These are those confirmed by the Senate. You can see most [3:59] of the cabinet, most of the line of succession was in that room. That's not unique, but it is unique [4:04] for a hotel ballroom like that. So there's double concern, especially that the suspected gunmen [4:09] seemed not to be all that well trained, but did make it that far. Still, there was a buffer between [4:14] him and the president ultimately. But there are a lot of questions about this kind of event there. [4:19] Also, Republicans are raising the idea. They say this is reason to fund the president's proposal [4:24] for that big ballroom by the White House. That is controversial. Now, this was a private event. [4:30] This is not a kind of event that would ever happen at the White House. So there are real questions [4:34] about how exactly that would work. [4:35] And what's next for the White House in all of this? [4:37] Well, we got a statement from a senior White House official earlier today saying that the [4:41] president does stand by the leadership of the Secret Service. But nevertheless, [4:45] the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is going to convene a meeting early this week with [4:50] the White House operations team, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security. All of those [4:55] leadership heads will be at the White House to discuss how to protect the president for major events [5:01] going forward. America celebrates the 250th anniversary of this country. The president [5:06] is supposed to attend a number of those events this summer. There's also the World Cup happening [5:10] here in the U.S. So the president will be attending several large events. The White House saying that [5:16] the president does have confidence in the Secret Service, but still taking these precautions. And Caroline [5:21] Levitt saying also from the podium today that security changes are never out of the question. So we may [5:27] see some changes to how the president moves and interacts in some of these political events. [5:31] Liz Landers, Lisa Desjardins, our thanks to you and the entire politics team. [5:36] Thanks, Jeff.