There’s no small irony that the latest assassination attempt on President Donald Trump took place at Washington DC’s Hilton hotel.
Locals have called it the ‘Hinckley Hilton’ ever since the last presidential assassination attempt in the US capital – when deranged Jodie Foster fan John Hinckley Jr opened fire on Ronald Reagan as he was leaving there in 1981.
Both attempts thankfully failed. As the world knows, Trump escaped without injury and, while President Reagan was badly wounded and spent almost two weeks in hospital, he went on to make a full recovery.
But the drama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has reinforced the security risks posed by hosting events at a working hotel.
The alleged gunman, 31-year-old Cole Allen, was able to circumvent many of the standard presidential security measures because he was staying at the 1,107-room Hilton as a guest. He was consequently already inside the outer security perimeter set up to protect the event. The suspect himself noted the ‘insane’ lack of security in a ‘manifesto’ that he had sent his family.
‘I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,’ he said of the hotel.
‘This level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.’
The hotel and the surrounding streets were closed to everyone but hotel guests and people with dinner invitations from 3pm.
President Trump escaped without injury. The alleged gunman, 31-year-old Cole Allen, was able to circumvent many of the standard presidential security measures
Locals have called Washington DC’s Hilton hotel the ‘Hinckley Hilton’ ever since the last presidential assassination attempt in the US capital – when deranged Jodie Foster fan John Hinckley Jr opened fire on Ronald Reagan as he was leaving there in 1981
Even when a ballroom event there is ‘hardened’ – security parlance, in this case, for being encircled by a small army of heavily armed Secret Service agents and uniformed officers equipped with metal detectors and cameras – hotel guests such as Allen had only to negotiate a single security check-in before gaining admission to the event.
And even that check, people who attended the dinner told the Daily Mail yesterday, was rudimentary. ‘I remember remarking even before the event that the security was incredibly lax,’ said one dinner guest, who was also staying at the hotel.
Later, along with other guests, she was able to get into the dinner simply by showing a ticket that, because they are sold by the table and not individually, only mentioned her table number and not her name.
‘I didn’t show my ID to anyone and nobody checked my name the whole day, which was mind-blowing,’ she said. ‘It was more difficult to get on my flight down to Washington than it was to get into a dinner with the President.’
Other guests complained that checking for metal items with detector wands was also cursory.
President Trump described the Hilton as ‘not particularly secure’ after the incident.
Hotel staff insiders have claimed Allen, from California, was able to check into an ‘unsecured’ bedroom at the Hilton a few days earlier, smuggling in undetected a mini-arsenal that included a shotgun, handgun and knives.
However, according to reports yesterday, Allen never made it to the basement level, let alone the ballroom. He was able to take stairs or escalators down to the so-called terrace level – the floor directly above the basement – where dinner guests had to show their invitations.
After reportedly unpacking the shotgun in a side room, the suspect ran across the terrace lobby, where a security checkpoint had been set up to screen guests, and headed towards stairs that would have taken him straight down to the ballroom.
As he went, he exchanged fire with members of the Secret Service thronging the lobby, hitting one of the uniformed officers, who was saved by his bulletproof vest.
Allen was not shot, instead being tackled to the ground at the top of the staircase leading down to the ballroom. It’s possible that the Secret Service was anxious to avoid hitting innocent bystanders in such a crowded area.
This is the third attempt on Trump’s life. During the 2024 campaign, a bullet fired by Thomas Crooks, 20, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazed his right ear. Crooks was subsequently shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Two months later, Ryan Routh, then 58, was arrested for trying to kill Trump as he was playing golf at his West Palm Beach course in Florida. In February this year he was sentenced to life in prison.