Dana White found it 'awesome' to be amid 'crazy' White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting
UFC boss Dana White found it "f****** awesome" to be amid the "crazy" White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on Saturday (25.04.26).
Dana White found it "f****** awesome" to be amid the "crazy" White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting on Saturday (25.04.26).
The annual media event was cancelled shortly after it began over the weekend when shots were fired outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton after a man - who has been identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen - rushed passed a security checkpoint, allegedly carrying guns and weapons, and while most attendees hid under tables while President Donald Trump, his wife Melania, and Vice President JD Vance were evacuated from the room, the UFC CEO was determined to see what was going on.
Dana, who attended as a guest of Paramount Skydance, told USA Today: "All of a sudden, it just started getting noisy. Tables started getting flipped over, guys running with guns, and they were screaming, 'Get down!'
"I didn't get down. It was f---ing awesome, and I literally took every minute of it in.
"It was a pretty crazy, unique experience."
Dana was seated "right in front of where the president was" at the time.
He added: "Nobody got tackled, but guys came in looking for the shooter. I thought the shooter was over by us or something."
Zachari Levi was also a guest at the gala and has detailed the confusion around what happened.
He told USA Today: “We were sitting at the table and there was some loud banging that definitely caught my attention.
“In the back of my head I thought, you know, jokingly thinking, ‘That kind of sounds like gunshots.’ But that wasn’t necessarily confirmed.
“It could have been some things in the hallway, some tables that were falling, that were banging down. I don’t know.
“The next thing we saw, everybody started to turn and drop. There was commotion. Everybody started to kind of hide under tables and the Secret Service were pouring in and trying to get to anyone of importance — anyone in the administration, any legislators, including the president. They were getting them all out of there as quickly as they could.”
And even once things began to "calm down", the Shazam! actor - who was seated at USA Today's table with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and his wife Kelly - admitted guests still didn't know what was happening.
He said: “Then everything seemed to calm down.
"Everyone started popping up from the tables — we didn’t know what was going on.
"And we just recently were told they are going to continue with the dinner with some updates soon.
"I don’t know, it’s very confusing because if it was an actual active live shooting then I don’t know why we would necessarily be continuing with the dinner.”
The dinner was ultimately cancelled but the president has pledged to reschedule the gala over the next few weeks.
The alleged shooter will be arraigned in federal court on Monday (27.04.26).
