When gunfire erupted at the Washington Hilton as President Trump sat in the ballroom for the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the hotel’s long presidential history and its earlier brush with assassination returned to the spotlight.
The hotel figured in another dramatic attack 45 years earlier. On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. produced a .22-caliber revolver and fired six shots in 1.7 seconds from about 15 feet away as President Ronald Reagan was leaving the Hilton after addressing AFL-CIO members. Reagan closed his remarks with the line, “Together we’ll make America great again.” Lead Secret Service agent Jerry Parr moved quickly to get the president into the limousine, but, as author Del Wilbur recounted, the sixth bullet “slaps against the side of the limousine, flattens to the size of a dime, slips through a gap an inch and a half wide between the door and the door frame and hits Reagan.”
Bullets also struck White House press secretary James Brady in the head, paralyzing him; D.C. police officer Thomas Delehanty in the back; and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy in the chest. Presidential historian Tevi Troy noted how close Reagan came to dying, and how the president insisted on walking into the hospital before collapsing so the country would not immediately fear the worst.
The assassination attempt was a turning point both for the Hilton and for how presidential security was handled. Designed in a wing-shaped, bird-in-flight form, the hotel was built to attract presidents: it includes a dedicated presidential entrance, a spiral staircase, a private elevator, a subterranean holding room wired to the White House, and a secure hallway from that holding room to the ballroom stage.
Opened 16 months after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Washington Hilton became the longtime home of major presidential events — the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the National Prayer Breakfast, the First Lady’s Luncheon, inaugural balls and countless presidential speeches stretching back to Lyndon Johnson. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have all spoken or attended significant events there; Biden delivered three speeches at the hotel within eight days in April 2024.
Security weaknesses laid bare by the Reagan shooting led to concrete changes. At the time, Reagan had to step outside to reach his limousine; the hotel later built a bunker-like garage with a secure door so a president could exit without exposure. The Secret Service introduced magnetometers and revised staffing and event procedures, and the White House itself installed magnetometers where it had not used them before.
In the most recent incident, authorities say Cole Tomas Allen attempted to force his way through a magnetometer into the Hilton ballroom in an alleged assassination attempt on President Trump, armed with a pump-action shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol, according to an affidavit. CBS News obtained what it reported as Allen’s alleged manifesto, which reportedly listed “administration officials” prioritized by rank, with one named exception: Kash Patel.
The dinner episode marks at least the third alleged attempt on Mr. Trump’s life. In February, Ryan Routh was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to kill him at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach during the 2024 campaign. In July 2024, Thomas Crooks fired at Mr. Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing his ear. Troy said multiple attempts against a modern president are unusual, comparing the pattern only to the two attempts on Gerald Ford in California within a single month.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, a verdict that provoked public outrage and helped spur legal change. The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 shifted the burden of proof so defendants must demonstrate insanity rather than requiring prosecutors to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Hinckley spent more than three decades at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital before his release in 2016; he later expressed remorse in a 2022 television interview.
Reagan returned to the Washington Hilton in September 1981 for a charity ball about six months after the shooting, using the new garage entrance and making no mention of the attack in his brief remarks.
After the recent shooting, Mr. Trump called for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to be rescheduled within 30 days with heightened security. Reporters who had been at the dinner gathered afterward in the White House briefing room, some still wearing black tie. “We’re going to do it again,” the president said that night, underscoring both the interruption the incident caused and the determination to continue the long-standing event.