White House officials are reportedly discussing whether it’s time to put President Donald Trump, 79, in a bullet-proof vest for all his public appearances.
“Major security improvements” are said to be on the table after an attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, where Trump and his top officials were frantically rushed to safety.
On Sunday morning, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy said, “There are discussions underway at the White House about whether or not President Trump is going to have to start wearing a bullet-proof vest for future events in public.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The alleged gunman, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, was arrested following a confrontation with the Secret Service outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton where the annual event was underway.
In a manifesto purportedly written by Allen and published Sunday, he wrote that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
The alleged gunman shot one agent before he was apprehended attempting to rush past a security checkpoint into the ballroom. Between five to eight shots were fired.
The injured agent was wearing a bullet-proof vest and was released from hospital Sunday morning.
After the shooting Saturday night, Trump reportedly told Doocy, “I feel like a piñata,” apparently a reference to Secret Service agents throwing him down to shield him in the latest of a series of attempted and foiled plots on the president’s life.
In July 2024, Trump was injured while speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. A bullet—one of five shots fired—grazed his ear. Two members of the public were injured, while another, Corey Comperatore, and the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, were killed.
A second attempt on the president was made in September 2024, at Trump’s own Florida golf course. Secret Service agents spotted a gun barrel in the bushes on the edge of the course, and engaged the gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, firing at least four rounds at him. In February 2026, he was convicted of plotting to kill Trump and sentenced to life in prison.
And in February a man was shot and killed when he tried to get into Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home, armed. Austin Tucker Martin attempted to enter the property while armed with a shotgun and gas canister. The president was not in the residence at the time.
Allen’s manifesto roundly criticizes the security surrounding the president and the Correspondents’ Dinner, marveling at the ease with which he was able to move freely around the Washington Hilton with his weapons as an already checked-in guest.
“I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” the manifesto reads.
“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
