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Mentalist Oz Pearlman opened up about the chaotic moments during the weekend shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, describing the scene as “surreal” and filled with immediate fear and confusion.
“This is something nefarious and dangerous, and you feel the hairs on your neck starting to lift and, if you watch the video, it’s surreal that this was 24 hours ago,” Pearlman said Sunday on “One Nation with Brian Kilmeade.”
Pearlman, who was with President Donald Trump at the time, said he initially struggled to process what was unfolding.
He recalled that the person next to him went down first as the situation escalated. In those first seconds, he said, he didn’t immediately think there was a shooter.
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“I’m telling you this just as the way that they were coming in, it didn’t look like they were going to shoot someone or watch for someone who was holding a gun,” he said.
“To me, it appeared as if they were trying to stop someone, so I thought a bomb was about to go off – that’s just, I’m telling you what happened in my mind.”
Pearlman dropped on all fours, bracing for what he thought would be an explosion.
At that point, Secret Service agents rushed to get President Trump, trying to get him down and out of harm’s way.
“The most surreal moments, potentially of my life, are when President Trump goes down about a foot away from me, and we are side to side, staring into each other’s eyes from a foot away,” Pearlman recalled.
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“The thought that crosses my mind right then is, ‘Oh no, I hope we’re not about to die,’ and adrenaline is just coursing through me because I said to myself, ‘There’s no way the Secret Service is forcing the president down for a fire drill.'”
Moments later, Pearlman said gunshots could be heard, though it was unclear at the time whether they were coming from inside or outside the room.
As the president was rushed out, Pearlman and others on the dais dropped low and began crawling to safety, unsure if an active shooter was still inside the venue.
Once backstage, he described the scene as “controlled chaos,” with armed agents flooding the area as attendees tried to determine whether anyone had been injured.
“There’s guns everywhere, Secret Service is everywhere. I felt safe. I was looking for blood around and asked other people because none of us knew if POTUS or the first lady had been hit. Nobody really knew what had happened at that point,” he recalled.
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“I was worried about my wife because she was out in the audience to watch my show, and no phones worked either because everyone was jamming up the system at the same time trying to call, trying to text… It was crazy. It was honestly a crazy five minutes.”
Chaos ensued Saturday when suspected gunman Cole Thomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, allegedly rushed a Secret Service checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner armed with multiple weapons.
Allen then allegedly opened fire on a Secret Service officer, who was taken to the hospital after he was shot in his ballistic vest.
Agents reportedly fired back at Allen, who was not struck. He was also taken to the hospital.
Senior federal law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation told Fox News that Allen told law enforcement after his arrest that he was targeting Trump administration officials.
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