Trump's upcoming public events get a fresh security look
[April 28, 2026]
By WILL WEISSERT
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal law enforcement officials are evaluating how
to proceed with some high-profile public events featuring President
Donald Trump after the attack at the White House Correspondents’
Association Dinner.
It’s the third time in less than two years that a gunman has come
uncomfortably close to Trump, renewing the central tension over how to
accommodate the public-facing demands of the president's office while
minimizing the risk of an attack.
Saturday’s episode, in which a man armed with guns and knives tried to
storm the Washington hotel ballroom where the president was set to
address the White House Correspondents’ Association, comes ahead of
Trump’s expected participation in a stretch of large, high-profile
events indoors and outdoors in the months ahead. Among them, he’s set to
mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, oversee the U.S. co-hosting the
World Cup and lead rallies meant to galvanize support for Republicans
ahead of November’s midterm elections.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will hold a meeting this week
with officials from the White House operations team, the Secret Service
and the Department of Homeland Security to discuss security protocol at
events with the president, according to a senior White House official.
The meeting will examine security steps that were successful on Saturday
while “exploring additional options” for future events, said the
official, who insisted on anonymity to confirm private discussions.
Separately, a person familiar with the matter said the U.S. Secret
Service was already reevaluating its security footing for the upcoming
events. The agency’s posture was already elevated due to the
extraordinary number of threats facing Trump — including two
back-to-back assassination attempts in 2024 — and the realities of
recent events such as the U.S.-Iran war.
“I can’t imagine that there’s any profession that is more dangerous,”
Trump said of the presidency Saturday night from the White House.
Inside the Secret Service, agents on protective intelligence and threat
assessment teams are also reexamining threats made against Trump in
recent months. Copycat violence can follow high-profile attacks,
according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss sensitive security planning.
The White House and Buckingham Palace said King Charles and Queen
Camilla’s state visit Monday is going ahead as planned. Still,
organizing around large-scale events deeper in the future — including
the UFC bout on the White House lawn marking Trump’s 80th birthday in
June, World Cup matches and the IndyCar race past the White House —
could get more complicated.
An inherent tension in presidential protection is exposed
Lawmakers, event attendees and some allies of the president saw fault in
the correspondents’ dinner security planning, questioning why someone
like the shooter could reserve a room at the hotel to sneak in weapons
around the outermost layer of security.
Republican Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman emeritus of the House
Homeland Security Committee, said security protocols for Trump and Vice
President JD Vance may need altering.
“I think the Secret Service needs to reconsider having both the
president and vice president together at something like that,” McCaul
told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Kari Lake, a former unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate in
Arizona and Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media,
complained about not having to show a photo ID to match her ticket to
the event when entering the hotel for the correspondents’ dinner. “I
can’t believe how lax the security was,” Lake wrote on X.
The Secret Service is charged only with the safety of its protectees,
not of the event itself, and the agency immediately celebrated its
response, drawing a high-profile endorsement from Trump himself.
“Our multilayered protection works,” director Sean Curran said Saturday.
“Those guys did a good job last night. They did a really good job,”
echoed Trump on Sunday in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
Garrett Graff, author of “Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s
Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die,” wrote in an
analysis of the multiple layers of security around Trump during the
dinner, “Seems like the system basically working as designed, amid the
always necessary trade-offs of security in a free society.”
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Members of law enforcement respond during the White House
Correspondents Dinner, Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Tom Brenner)
Retired Secret Service Agent Thomas D. Quinn, who helped pioneer
Secret Service counterassault teams, posted on X that “the Secret
Service security plan for the WHCD worked and the assailant was
stopped.” He continued, “As long as we are a free people in a
freedom loving Nation, the Secret Service responsibilities will
continue to be immense.”
More security changes ahead
Ronald Kessler, author of “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind
the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They
Protect,” said authorities are likely to consider placing
bulletproof glass around where Trump speaks outside and inside — not
unlike after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt during
the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Attendees, Kessler said, will likely be more thoroughly screened
going forward — exacerbating lines at entrances that can already
take hours to clear. An example of what might happen came last fall,
when Trump attended the men’s final of the U.S. Open tennis
tournament and triggered massive security lines.
Such events underscore the complicated security questions
surrounding presidential protection in a country where citizens
expect their leaders to move through public spaces, hold rallies,
attend events and appear before crowds.
“Presidents don’t like to have too much protection,” Kessler said.
“I think, by their nature, they’re very outgoing. They want to meet
people. They don’t want to be accused of being prisoners of the
White House. And so, they’ll try to get around some of these
improvements.”
Presidents can have love-hate relationships with security details
The Secret Service took over full-time responsibility for protecting
the president during the administration of President Theodore
Roosevelt, who came to office after an assassin killed William
McKinley in 1901. Roosevelt found the constant security presence
tiresome, however, and would sometimes slip away for unprotected
hikes or horseback rides in Washington’s Rock Creek Park, according
to the White House Historical Association.
Security personnel wanted President Ronald Reagan to exit the
building where Saturday night’s shooting occurred, the Washington
Hilton, through a covered garage in 1981, Kessler said. Reagan’s
staff worried the optics would be bad, however, and the president
was shot as he left an open-air exit, ultimately surviving.
After shots were fired Saturday, Secret Service agents surrounded
Trump, who appeared to slip slightly as he was whisked away. Another
team moved Vance so quickly it seemed as if it might haul him out
while still seated in a banquet chair.
Trump told “60 Minutes” on Sunday that he “wasn’t making it easy”
for the Secret Service by being “a little bit me.”
“I wanted to see what was happening,” the president said Sunday.
“And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem —
different kind of a problem — bad one.”
“I probably made them act a little bit more slowly. I said: ‘Wait a
minute, wait a minute. Lemme see. Wait a minute,’” Trump said. He
said he started walking out but: “They said, 'Please go down. Please
go down on the floor.′ So I went down, and the first lady went down
also.”
Trump repeatedly praised the Secret Service and his detail, and he
has pushed the correspondents’ association to reschedule the dinner.
He said it would have “even more security.”
“And they’ll have bigger perimeter security,” he said. "It’ll be
fine.”
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Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim in Washington and Mike
Balsamo in New York contributed.
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