The White House press briefing room remains packed to the brim, with Trump, flanked by cabinet officials, vice president JD Vance, first lady Melania and others.

Trump said secret service did a better job today than the assassination attempt in Butler.

“He was fast” Trump said of the shooter.

He also told reporters “I guess” he was the target at the event and assumes the attacker was “a lone wolf” and a “wack job”.

He called it “crazy” and said “I want to live because I want to make this country great”.

Asked if he was concerned about rising political violence in the US, Trump said he had to be.

“It’s a dangerous profession,” Trump said of being an American politician. The job of president was statistically more dangerous than being a race car driver or a bullfighter, he said. “If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn’t have run,” he said, referencing his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was one his rivals for the 2016 Republican nomination.

In comments after police arrested a suspected shooter at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Donald Trump described the Washington Hilton as “not a particularly secure building” and argued the merits of the construction of a ballroom at the White House. “This is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s much more secure. … They’ve wanted the ballroom for 150 years for lots of different reasons. But today’s a little bit different, because today we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.”

Trump said he had studied assassinations, and said he presumed he was the target of the gunman. “The people who make the biggest impact, those are the ones they go after,” he said.

“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. Happened to me a little bit,” Trump said, obliquely referencing two previous incidents where a gunman either shot at him or had allegedly been planning to do so. “It was very quick. There wasn’t a lot of time to be thinking … I don’t like to let these sick people, these thugs, these horrible, horrible people change the fabric of our lives, change the course of what we do.”

Trump lauded the Secret Service and law enforcement, noting that a Secret Service agent had been shot. “It was, in one way, very beautiful, a very beautiful thing to see a man charge a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of secret service, and they acted very quickly.”

Trump said his speech would have excoriated the press before the shooting, but would be less critical now. “We’re talking about free speech in our constitution. That’s what it’s all about. Not just White House correspondents, it was really based on free speech in our constitution. But I said, very importantly, that we’ll do it again within the next 30 days, it will make it bigger and better, and even nicer.

At the White House press briefing room, Donald Trump said that one police officer was shot following the gunshots going off at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington Saturday night.

He explained that in the moment they were “quite far away”.

Trump said that there will be another dinner “within the next 30 days and we’ll make it better and even nicer”.

Acting attorney general Todd Blanche says that an investigation is under way, and FBI director Kash Patel says they will be interviewing people who were in the room.

Asked if he believed he was the target, Trump said: “I guess.”

“When you’re impactful they go after you,” Trump said.

He said earlier: “The room was very, very secure. He charged from 50 yards away so he was very far away from the room.”

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was also at the dinner and stood beside the president during the briefing.

“You saw the very worst by the actions of that coward that the president just talked about, but you also saw the very best because you saw law enforcement do exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Blanche said.

Kash Patel, the FBI director, is also in the briefing room and vowed accountability.

Trump heaped praise on the law enforcement response and said he would have preferred to return to the ballroom to give his speech.

“I fought like hell to stay,” Trump told the briefing room.

Images are coming into the news room from the evacuation and the moments that followed. Secret Service rushed through the room, removing the president, the first lady and several cabinet members.

Many journalists and guests left the gala amid the chaos, but many remained in the room.

“It was in one way very beautiful, a very beautiful thing to see a man charge a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of Secret Service,” Trump tells reporters. He has shared a photograph of the suspect on Truth Social.

Weijia Jiang, the president of the WHCA, rode with the president to the White House.

“I came to the WH with President Trump, who is preparing for a press conference to brief reporters. We hope to have more answers soon. A few of us are waiting in the briefing room. Thank God he, the First Lady, and everyone who was attending the WHCD was safe.” she said on X.

Reporters in the White House briefing room have been given a two-minute warning, meaning the president will speak shortly. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell is in the briefing room.

Marcin Wrona, US correspondent for TVN Poland, was sitting close to the incident. He told the Guardian’s David Smith: “We were waiting for our dinner and suddenly I heard bang, bang, bang, bang and for a moment we had no idea what was going on but then we immediately heard someone scream, ‘Shots fired!’ and everybody went, you know, under under the table.

“I stayed on my chair, looking around to see if there is any imminent danger, if I can spot anything. I couldn’t. And some people were really frightened. You could clearly see that.

“Then the evacuation of the president, the first lady, etc, etc. But also the members of the cabinet, Steve Scalise, were being escorted outside right next to us. So, in fact, they were passing very close to where the shots were fired, but they were using a different door.”

Wrona added: “It is a bit surprising because this is supposed to be the most secure place in Washington DC with cabinet members, president, vice-president, everybody here. So this is the most secure place. Yes, there are tensions. Yes, we had attempts on President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in Florida. Am I very surprised? Unfortunately not.”

The WHCA gala is held each year at the Washington Hilton.

It is the same hotel where president Ronald Reagan was shot and gravely wounded by a would-be assassin in 1981.

WHCA had hoped to resume the dinner, but now many of the journalists from the dinner are trying to make it to the White House in time to attend the president’s press briefing. Many of the roads around the hotel are closed or blocked.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a black-tie event hosted by the association of journalists who cover the US president, held annually in the cavernous ballroom of the Washington Hilton.

Known as “nerd prom” the evening has traditionally been attended by the president, political leaders, comedians and celebrities, who come together in celebration of press freedom. However, Trump had made it a practice not to attend during his first term. This year was the first time he had ever attended the event, and was set to make a speech. The featured entertainer this year was mentalist and magician Oz Pearlman.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said he was within a few feet of the shooter, and called into CNN to describe his observations.

Blitzer said he saw “a very, very serious weapon. He starts shooting, and I happened to have been a few feet away from him. As he was shooting, of course, the first thing that went through my mind: is he trying to shoot me? And I don’t think he was trying to shoot me, but I was very close to him as the gunshots were fired and he was very, very scary. But I’m OK, now.”

In longer comments to CNN, Blitzer said he did not see the actual shooting, but was in a nearby hallway when gunfire erupted.

Blitzer had been returning from the men’s room when the shooting began, he said.

In a statement, secret service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, said the agency was investigating a “shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner”.

“The president and the first lady are safe,” he said, along with everyone who was at the dinner and in the protection of Secret Service. “One individual is in custody. The condition of those involved is not yet known, and law enforcement is actively assessing the situation.”

The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang was seated at the table alongside colleagues and guests when someone yelled that shots had been fired. Guests began diving under the tables. She recalls Secret Service agents running in and moving chairs of the way as they raced down the aisles.

“Everyone kind of stayed under the tables for a little while, until people started like popping back up and then everyone tried to figure out what was going on – they were talking to each other like, ‘What happened? What happened?’”

Then security agents came inside of the ballroom and said everyone needed to leave. Rachel said she left the room.

Now Rachel is outside, where the sounds of sirens and helicopters are buzzing all around. She is safe, and said the exits have been blocked.

David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, spoke briefly to Frank Luntz, a prominent political consultant and pollster.

“I watched the security people use the ultimate in athleticism to get over tables, get over chairs, to get to the people that they were guarding,” Luntz said.

“The Secret Service was impressive, the congressional security was impressive. All the military and all the people responsible for keeping Americans safe, they were all in play in the last few minutes, and it’s both impressive and frightening that this should happen at the White House correspondents’ dinner. I’ve never seen this before. More security people are in this room than in any other place in America. And they all leaped into action. They all understood what they were facing. And it makes me proud to be an American.”

The Guardian’s David Smith, who was one of four Guardian journalists in the room at the Washington Hilton when the president was evacuated, stopped Representative Jamie Raskin for his reaction.

Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, said: “I didn’t see anything in terms of the shooter except I just entered the room about five minutes ago and I was talking to people from the Boston Globe and my old friend Kerry Kennedy and then I think a secret service agent threw me to the ground and on top of some other people and people were screaming and yelling.

“Apparently there was a shooter in the lobby and, at least the rumor is, that the shooter has been killed and is dead in the lobby and that’s really all I know. I was just trying to get over to the NBC table – these people had invited me and I never even made it to the table so I felt bad.”

Raskin added: “I heard some loud noises but I don’t know if that was people reacting or if that was something outside, it was hard to know, but people very quickly were saying that was a shot, that was the gunshot.

“People were terrified; people seem to be relieved now.”