On Saturday night, Donald Trump attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton. During the ceremony, a California resident named Cole Tomas Allen reportedly sprinted past a security checkpoint on a different floor of the hotel. Before he was arrested, Allen fired one shot that reportedly hit a Secret Service agent's bulletproof vest. Otherwise, nobody was harmed. Trump and his administration officials were taken out of the dinner, which eventually resumed. Trump seemingly faced no immediate danger. Bruce Springsteen, for one, is thankful that Trump wasn't shot.
On Sunday night, Bruce Springsteen played at Austin's Moody Center, and he opened the show with a speech that included a "prayer of thanks" that Trump and the members of his administration weren't hurt at the Correspondents' dinner. Here's what he said:
We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for their safe return. We also send out a prayer of thanks that our president, nor anyone in the administration, nor anyone attending was injured in last night’s incident at the Press Correspondents' Dinner. We can disagree. We can be critical of those in power. And we can peacefully fight for our beliefs, but there is no place in any way, shape, or form for political violence of any kind in our beloved United States.
Right now, Bruce Springsteen is in the middle of a war of words with Donald Trump. Springsteen's current Land Of Hope & Dreams Tour with the E Street Band is framed as a rebuke of MAGA, and it includes protest songs and speeches from the Boss. Earlier this month, Trump called for a boycott of the "bad, and very boring singer."
Springsteen did not acknowledge the guy who went viral for taking a bite of salad before ducking under his table at the Correspondents' Dinner. The New York Times did a full explainer, and that guy was a CAA agent who "wasn't scared at all."
