Who is Trump’s “would-be assassin”… were there security failings at DC shooting?
Americast
BBC
4.3 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The US president says the gunman who stormed a security perimeter at the White House correspondents’ dinner had written a “manifesto”. Investigators are continuing to examine a possible motive for the attack which appeared to be aimed at the president and his top aides. In this episode, Justin and Sarah talk to the BBC‘s state department correspondent Tom Bateman who was at the dinner and was in the room as it all happened.
HOSTS: • Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter • Sarah Smith, North America Editor
GUEST: • Tom Bateman, BBC State Department Correspondent
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This episode was made by Alix Pickles and Purvee Pattni. The technical producer was Rohan Madison. The series producer is Purvee Pattni. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | It's always shocking when something like this happens, happened to me a little bit, and that never changes. |
| 0:13.0 | The fact we were sitting right next to each other, the first lady, am I right? |
| 0:19.0 | And I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. |
| 0:23.6 | I thought it was a tray going down. I've heard that many times and it was pretty loud noise. |
| 0:29.5 | And it was from quite far away. He hadn't breached the area at all. They really got him. |
| 0:35.2 | But so it was quite far away, but it was a gun. And some people |
| 0:40.6 | really understood that pretty quickly. Other people didn't. I was watching to see what was |
| 0:46.6 | happening, probably should have gone down even faster. Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what |
| 0:53.4 | happened. I think she knew immediately what happened. |
| 0:56.4 | She was saying, that's a bad noise. And we were whisked away along with other people, but we |
| 1:06.4 | were really whisked away. President Trump there speaking from the White House last night, |
| 1:10.7 | just an hour |
| 1:11.2 | or so after the incident that he's describing there. And he does sound a bit shaken, but |
| 1:16.2 | who wouldn't be in the circumstances? The third serious assassination attempt against him in less |
| 1:21.6 | than two years. He says he was the likely target. There are a lot of questions to be asked about what happened last night, the security failures, |
| 1:31.8 | the implications of it and the motives. |
| 1:34.5 | Many issues for us to get into in this special edition. |
| 1:37.8 | Welcome to AmeriCast. |
| 1:42.0 | AmeriCast from BBC News |
| 1:44.7 | You hear that sound? |
| 1:46.2 | Oh, I think when I hear that sound |
... |
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