White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is convening a meeting of top security officials to determine protocol changes after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
A man ran through a US Secret Service (USSS) perimeter at the press gala on Saturday night with multiple firearms while Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top government officials were inside a ballroom on a different floor.
Though the suspect was quickly subdued and did not enter the large dining hall where Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, were, many of those in attendance have fretted over how a gunman was even able to get into the building, particularly after two prior assassination attempts on the President’s life.
Now, Wiles, dubbed Trump’s ‘Ice Queen,’ is asking a group of top security officials to meet and discuss how to better protect the President.
‘President Trump has said he personally thinks they did an excellent job neutralizing the shooter and moving the President, First Lady, Vice President and cabinet to safety,’ a senior White House official told the Daily Mail.
‘Nevertheless, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is convening a meeting early this week with the White House operations team, USSS, and DHS leadership to discuss protocol and practices for major events involving POTUS.’
‘The meeting will discuss the processes and procedures that worked to stop Saturday’s attempt, while exploring additional options to ensure all relevant components are doing everything possible to secure the many major events planned for President Trump in the months ahead as he gears up to celebrate America 250.’
Since the pair of assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign, multiple security lapses have roiled the Secret Service, including a group of protestors getting within feet of the President at a DC restaurant last year, breaches at Trump’s Florida home and most recently the press gala.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is convening a meeting with the Secret Service and other top security officials to discuss the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, a senior White House official told the Daily Mail
The meeting will involve Trump admin officials, Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security
Secret Service agents reacted quickly to the breach on Saturday and were able to apprehend the suspect within feet of the outer security perimeter. However, some officials still say the security was too lax
Just hours after the suspected shooter, Cole Allen, 31, was apprehended by authorities after breaching the WHCD, Trump held a press conference at the White House, noting the security deficiencies of the event.
‘It’s not particularly a secure building,’ Trump said of the Washington Hilton.
Even people not attending the gala could enter the Hilton through public hotel access points without being routed through the event’s security screening, an alarming gap that is now being scrutinized.
Top Republicans in attendance also fumed over the lackluster security.
‘It’s an open hotel … you could walk in without going through a magnetometer,’ Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, who attended the dinner, said in a weekend interview.
‘The Secret Service needs to reconsider having both the president and vice president together at something like that … Had an explosive device gone off, you would have knocked out the president, the vice president and the speaker: the three in the line of succession,’ he added.
The list of governmental VIPs at the dinner was expansive; most in the presidential line of succession were present, prompting concerns about a decapitation event akin to the meeting of top Iranian officials that resulted in most of its top officials being taken out by US-Israeli forces.
At least a dozen of the 16-member Cabinet were in attendance in the cavernous Hilton dining room.
Despite the multiple lapses in security over the past years, Secret Service Director Sean Curran is likely to remain in his post, a source told RealClearPolitics.
The suspected breacher Cole Tomas Allen, 31, shown in his driver’s license photo
Allen had allegedly expressed anti-Trump views in a manifesto
Secret Service agents sprung into action quickly to flank the President after several shots were heard in the banquet hall
‘Susie oversees the Secret Service, and it’s failure after failure after failure, and she gets no blame,’ the source said.
‘This should’ve been the most secure perimeter in the world. And the fact that the guy made it through the mags underscores the epic failure of the US Secret Service in protecting the president.’
In late February, USSS and local law enforcement shot and killed Austin Martin, 21, after he breached the secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home with a shotgun.
In September 2025, the President was confronted by a group of screaming protestors at Joe’s Seafood in Washington.
The Code Pink activists were able to get within feet of Trump, prompting concern over how they knew about the President’s impromptu visit to the restaurant.
