Man charged with attempting to assassinate Trump
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A court in Washington DC has charged a Los Angeles man with attempting to assassinate the US president. The White House hit out after what it says was the third attempt on Donald Trump's life in as many years. We hear from one of America's foremost experts on political violence.
Also in the programme: insurgents make dramatic advances in Mali; can a new political party in Israel really unseat Binyamin Netanyahu? And as the naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough approaches his century, we look back at one of his defining moments.
(IMAGE: U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro speaks, flanked by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel during a press conference about the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner where U.S. President Donald Trump was present, at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 27, 2026 / CREDIT: ReutersKylie Cooper)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:15.1 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:16.7 | And we're beginning with the latest on the Washington shooting. The incident on Saturday |
| 0:21.1 | when a gala dinner featuring the president, the vice president, and large numbers of the most |
| 0:25.8 | powerful politicians in the US, was interrupted by gunfire. U.S. Secret Service agents quickly |
| 0:31.9 | disarmed and detained the alleged shooter. The VIPs, including Donald and Melania Trump, |
| 0:37.1 | were unceremoniously hustled to safety. |
| 0:40.4 | A job well done, said the White House at the time. But that is nowhere near the end of the story. |
| 0:46.1 | There are big questions about who the suspect is, why he acted as he appears to have done, |
| 0:51.5 | whether the security worked or whether it actually had been breached, |
| 0:55.5 | and what we can say more broadly about political violence in the US. On which point, the White |
| 1:01.3 | House press secretary Caroline Levitt, who'd been with the president and the First Lady on Saturday |
| 1:05.6 | night at that dinner, made an appeal today for greater civility in political discourse, but also had this pointed rebuke. |
| 1:13.6 | Nobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump. |
| 1:19.2 | This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters, |
| 1:24.6 | by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some |
| 1:29.7 | in the media. This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump |
| 1:35.3 | day after day after day for 11 years has helped legitimize this violence and bring us to this |
| 1:42.8 | dark moment. Those who constantly falsely |
| 1:46.2 | label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to |
| 1:51.8 | Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence. Caroline Levitt, |
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