“Just crazy.” What the man who was doing a “mentalism” number for Trump and his press secretary at the time of the weekend attack says
Oz Pearlman told the BBC that the weekend gun attack at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in the Washington Hilton Hotel happened while he was interacting with US President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Pearlman, who describes herself as a “mentalist,” said she was trying to figure out how many letters Karoline Leavitt's baby girl's name would have.
“The timing was just so crazy because I was in the middle of a number for the first lady and the president and the press secretary…trying to guess the name — the press secretary is having a baby soon,” he recounted.
He said the shots were heard just as he was tearing up a piece of paper to reveal the name the child would have. Because the Secret Service agents were “all heading toward the same table,” he thought “a bomb was about to go off.”
“They didn't look like they were looking for an attacker. It looked like they were trying to stop something,” Pearlman explained.
The former America's Got Talent contestant claims she looked Donald Trump “directly in the eye” “two seconds” before the president was removed from the room by Secret Service agents.
A White House official quoted by The Hill said press secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, the youngest woman to hold the position and the first to hold it while pregnant, is due to give birth to a baby girl next week.
Her and her husband's first child, a baby boy named Niko, was born in July 2024.
Armed attack at the Correspondents' Dinner
The armed incident took place on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton Hotel, which was hosting the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other senior officials had gathered. A Secret Service agent was shot at close range, but was saved by his bulletproof vest, Trump announced after the attack.
The suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, told law enforcement after his arrest that he wanted to shoot Trump administration officials, CBS News reported Sunday, citing two sources.
