President Donald Trump told CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell that he may have complicated the Secret Service's effort to get him out of the Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday night, saying he paused to assess the situation after shots rang out at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The remarks came in a preview of a "60 Minutes" interview set to air Sunday night, as Fox News Digital reported.

The shooting forced the abrupt end of the annual dinner and the evacuation of Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and several administration officials. Authorities identified the suspect as Cole Allen, a 31-year-old computer scientist from Torrance, California. They said he was armed with multiple weapons when he rushed a Secret Service checkpoint and allegedly opened fire on a Secret Service officer.

Fox News confirmed with law enforcement sources that Allen was targeting Trump administration officials. The officer who was struck was wearing a ballistic vest, was taken to the hospital, and was released on Sunday. The suspect was taken into custody.

Trump describes the moments after shots were fired

In the interview preview, Trump described what went through his mind as agents moved to surround him. He did not hide behind the standard political script of praising the security detail and leaving it at that. Instead, he admitted he slowed things down.

Trump told O'Donnell:

"Well, what happened is it was a little bit me. I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't making it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people. And I probably made them act a little bit more slow. They said, 'Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let me see. Wait a minute.'"

O'Donnell noted that it took 10 seconds for an agent to reach Trump and another 20 seconds before he was taken out of the building. That 30-second window, half a minute in a room where a gunman had just opened fire nearby, is the kind of gap that has already prompted Speaker Johnson to demand a Secret Service overhaul.

Trump went on to describe his exit in physical terms. He said he stood up, turned around, and began walking out, "pretty tall, a little bent over," as he put it, because he was not looking to stand at full height. About halfway to the exit, agents told him and the first lady to get on the floor.

Trump told O'Donnell:

"I was standing up and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over because I, you know, I'm not looking to be standing too tall but I was walking out, was pretty about halfway there. And they said, 'Please go down to the floor. Please go down to the floor.' So I dropped to the floor. So did the first lady."

What authorities said about the suspect

During a news conference Saturday night, authorities said Allen was armed with multiple weapons when he rushed the Secret Service checkpoint and then allegedly opened fire on an officer. Trump confirmed in a press conference shortly after the shooting that the suspect was in custody.

The suspect's background has drawn sharp scrutiny. Reports that Allen donated to the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue have intensified questions about whether the political climate contributed to the attack. Law enforcement sources confirmed to Fox News that Allen was targeting Trump administration officials, a detail that elevates the incident well beyond a random act of violence.

No information about formal charges against Allen appeared in the Fox News report. His exact path to the checkpoint, and how he managed to reach it armed with multiple weapons, remain open questions.

A president who has faced this before

Trump's reaction, pausing, looking around, wanting to see what was happening before complying with his detail, will sound familiar to anyone who watched the aftermath of the 2024 assassination attempt. It is consistent with the disposition of a man who has now survived multiple direct threats to his life while in or near public office.

That disposition carries risk. A president who slows his own evacuation by even a few seconds creates a wider window of exposure. But Trump did not frame it as bravado. He described it matter-of-factly, acknowledged it made the agents' job harder, and said he eventually complied when the gravity of the situation became clear.

The broader question, why a man armed with multiple weapons was able to reach a Secret Service checkpoint at an event attended by the president, is one the agency will have to answer. Fox News Digital said it reached out to the Secret Service for comment. No response was included in the report.

The dinner and what comes next

Trump said he requested the White House Correspondents' Association to reschedule the dinner within the next 30 days. The gesture is notable. A president who just had his evening interrupted by gunfire is asking for a do-over, not retreating from the event.

The Secret Service officer who was shot in his ballistic vest was released from the hospital on Sunday. That officer's willingness to stand between a gunman and the people inside the building deserves more attention than it has received.

Meanwhile, the incident has fed a predictable cycle. Some on the left floated conspiracy theories about the shooting almost immediately, claims so reckless that even MSNBC hosts felt compelled to condemn them.

The rhetorical climate around Trump has been a subject of growing concern for years. Commentary from media figures in the days before the dinner, including remarks from Jimmy Kimmel that Melania Trump publicly called out, has only sharpened the argument that overheated language carries real-world consequences.

As one commentator recently argued, the press spent years framing Trump as an existential threat, and some people took that framing literally.

Trump, for his part, appears focused on projecting resolve rather than vulnerability. His posture on foreign policy reinforces the pattern. In a separate interview, he described personally canceling a planned diplomatic trip to Iran, telling his team they would not fly 18 hours to negotiate from a position of strength. The Washington Examiner reported that Trump said, "We have all the cards," and refused to lift a naval blockade without a full deal, a stance that mirrors his refusal to be hurried out of a room by gunfire.

The real accountability gap

The facts as reported raise hard questions. A suspect armed with multiple weapons reached a Secret Service checkpoint at an event where the president was seated. He allegedly opened fire on an officer. It took 10 seconds for an agent to reach the president and another 20 to get him moving toward the exit. The suspect was apparently targeting administration officials.

Those are not minor procedural hiccups. They describe a security perimeter that was breached by a man who, by all available accounts, intended to do serious harm to people at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Trump's candor about slowing the evacuation is worth noting, but it should not become the story. The story is that a gunman got close enough to fire on a Secret Service officer at a presidential event. Everything else is secondary.

When the people tasked with protecting the president cannot keep an armed man from reaching their checkpoint, the question is not whether the president moved fast enough. The question is why he had to move at all.