Of all the possible outcomes that would have made headlines at Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, nobody had “third assassination attempt of Donald Trump” on their list; however, that became the only story of the night after Cole Allen, a 31-year-old California teacher, was arrested trying to shoot his way into the Washington Hilton ballroom and strike as many members of the Trump administration as he could. Fortunately, Allen only wounded one Secret Service member who was wearing a bullet-proof vest before he was quickly subdued. Allen’s attempt to storm into the annual gala, however, created confusion and led to the postponement of the dinner, as the Secret Service quickly whisked Trump away from possible harm.
Jimmy Failla is the host of the eponymous “Fox Across America with Jimmy Failla,” heard weeknights 9-midnight on 710 WOR, as well as “Fox News Saturday Night with Jimmy Failla” on the Fox News Channel. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program to offer his take on what happened as Allen tried to unleash carnage but was foiled instead.
Failla told Curtis and Larry how he was in the ballroom around the time Allen showed up: “I went through those same magnetometers that the shooter sprinted through probably a legitimate three or four minutes before he did. The joke at security, because everyone is standing around at their footposts, is, I said, ‘Listen man, I’m gonna be in and out of here quick. I just want to eat a roll. I’m going to be on camera for three hours.’ And we were joking about how nobody in TV eats and that’s why they’re all so cranky. So, I walk in [and go] to table 235, which is where my ticket was. I grab a roll, and the minute I grab it, a Secret Service guy throws me on the ground. I thought it was Fox wardrobe. I was like, wow, they really don’t want me eating carbs- holy hell, these guys are serious! And I just saw everybody running toward the stage.”
In hindsight, Failla says he’s disappointed people didn’t get to see him and other media members debating and disagreeing in a civil tone: “The real frustration is it makes me feel bad for the country, in the sense that that would have been, no exaggeration, the biggest night of my life in media because it was going to be a free-for-all hilarity… that is a flaw in my operating system, that I’m still new enough to media that I care, and I’m trying to help. [But] I’ll get over that, you know what I mean; hopefully I’m, like, a contract away from a speedboat.”
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