UFC CEO Dana White was right in the middle of the chaos at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. A lone gunman, allegedly identified as Cole Allen, 31, a computer scientist from Torrance, California, was detained but not before the suspect shot a police officer. That officer, who was wearing a ballistics vest, was taken to a nearby hospital for observation and is expected to make a full recovery.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were rushed to safety, along with numerous members of his cabinet, at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
White was seated off-stage but near the President, along with officials from Paramount, the broadcast parter of the UFC. While at the event, UFC Vegas 116 was being broadcast live via Paramount+.
White spoke with USA Today about the experience. “(Suddenly), it just started getting noisy,” the UFC frontman said. “Tables getting flipped over, guys running in with guns and they were screaming ‘Get down.’ I didn’t get down. It was f*cking awesome. I literally took every minute of it in, and it was a pretty crazy, unique experience. We were sitting right in front of the table, right in front of where the president was. Nobody got tackled, but guys came in looking for shooters and they came toward out table. I thought the shooter was over by us or something.”
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Cole was taken into custody but not before agents returned fire. The dinner was eventually cancelled but the President said the event would be rescheduled.
“The response time was really incredible, and we’re going to reschedule,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it again, we’re not going to let anybody take over our society; we’re not going to cancel things because we can’t do that. We wanted to stay tonight. I will tell you, I fought like hell to stay, but it was protocol.”
