Should the Secret Service be reprimanded or should they be praised? We need to wait for more information, but it seems like both praise and punishment are probably in order. Several questions need to be asked. Why wasn’t the whole hotel on lockdown? This was a major event that was well publicized. It was an event at which the president, the vice president, and multiple cabinet members were present. Why didn’t we have the highest level of security available at this event? Why weren’t all the guests in the hotel searched for weapons?
At every TSA checkpoint in the United States, before you get to the metal detectors, there is a serpentine line to impede anyone who wants to run through the checkpoint. Why wasn’t this same practice employed at the Washington Hilton?
Yes, the Secret Service agents acted rapidly to subdue the suspect and make sure that he did not get into the ballroom. They are to be commended for this. Yet seems that somebody in charge of security wasn’t thinking straight. Aren’t we at war with a country that we know sponsors terrorism? Where were their thinking caps?
It sure seems we should be doing everything we can to keep ourselves safe in these dangerous times. That means locking down events like these, so they are as tight as Fort Knox.
Bear in mind, the events at the DC Hilton have nothing to do with whether we should build a $400 million ballroom for the president. The two things are not related and should not be tied together. But that was President Trump’s immediate reaction: that holding these events in his new ballroom would make them safer. Yet it is perfectly possible to hold a locked-down, secure event in Washington without spending $400 million on a drone-proof ballroom.
Moreover, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which sponsors the annual dinner, is not a government agency. It is a private organization that invites public officials and celebrities to their event. They are the hosts, not the White House or any government agency. So, first of all, they would have no legal right to invite guests to the White House—the People’s House. They’d have to ask the president’s permission even to consider it. And that’s not what a free press does.
Furthermore, if they did ask and if the administration granted such permission, then the administration would control the guest list. The president could veto the name of any media outlet, journalist, or celebrity who might make a joke about him or insult him.
And, finally, a present or future administration could cancel such a dinner after it was scheduled, with little notice to the hosts, if, say, it doesn’t like the news coverage it’s getting. Or if it dislikes the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press, or, like this president, considers the media “the enemy of the people.”
