When chaos erupted Saturday evening at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, one University of Tennessee student was sitting just yards away from President Donald Trump. Gail Fanning, a senior from Kingsport, Tennessee is studying journalism and political science.
It’s long been her dream to report from Capitol Hill. She says she was excited to spend an evening rubbing elbows with some of D.C.’s most influential lawmakers and the journalists who cover them.
This year’s dinner was already set to be noteworthy: it was the first one Donald Trump agreed to attend as a sitting president, breaking with his tradition of stiffing the WHCA. The association has invited the sitting president to its annual dinner every year since 1924. Since 1991 they’ve offered scholarships to college students who are interested in one day covering D.C. The prestigious award comes with an invitation to attend the group’s glitzy annual dinner at the Washington Hilton.
After hours of socializing, Fanning settled into the first course of the meal shortly after 8 p.m. It was then she says she heard a loud clatter as thousands of dinner guests dropped their forks and knives. People began to shout.
“My first instinct [was] to get under the table and hide,” Fanning said.
She says she didn’t hear any gunshots, and she couldn’t see anything from under the table. She had no idea what was happening.
“It felt very chaotic,” Fanning said. “People were trying to figure out what was going on.”
Her family and friends were texting and calling her, asking if she was alright. They were telling her there had been a shooting. She says she was afraid.
“And the entire time, I'm just trying to find something to touch that wasn't my clothing or my cell phone, just to kind of calm my nerves,” Fanning said. “But it was so crazy being in there knowing something had happened and not being able to piece everything together.”
She spent about five minutes under the table before the room calmed down. WHCA President Weijia Jiang announced the dinner would be postponed, and Fanning was ushered out along with her fellow scholars.
It wasn’t until she got back to her hotel room for the night that she realized someone had tried to break into the ballroom and shoot the president. She couldn’t believe it.
As she packed and prepared to fly home to Knoxville, her head swirled. She was upset at what had happened, not just for the violence but also the twisted meaning given to the night. She’s afraid people will think of the dinner differently from now on, and that they might forget its purpose: to unite and honor journalists in support of the First Amendment.
“We should not have to fight for our safety at an event that's supposed to be peaceful and fun and celebratory,” Fanning said. “So I just don't think it's a good sign for our psyches as well as for our country's political state.”
She’s also disheartened by the division the attempted assassination has already sown. Less than an hour after the attempt on his life, Trump already began using the event as justification for the construction of his controversial ballroom addition to the White House. At the same time, many online have lamented that the attacker didn’t reach his target.
“It's sad that we're taking a tragedy and trying to turn it into something else,” Fanning said. “We’re all humans. Maybe we shouldn’t do that.”
At a press conference held 30 minutes after the shooting, Trump told a crowd of reporters still sporting their gowns and tuxedos that he wants to hold the dinner again within a month. Fanning hopes she’ll get another chance to attend, because she says her dream hasn’t changed. She still wants to report from D.C.
