I’ve covered Trump for a decade. At the White House correspondents’ dinner, darkness came viscerally close

Men in tuxedos and women in dresses dove under tables, like a scene from a dozen Hollywood movies, but now it was happening to me Shocking. Unnerving. Unpredictable. Violent. For a decade I have been following the twists and turns of Donald Trump’s America with the privilege of journalistic distance. On Saturday night I felt the darkness come viscerally close. Bang! Bang! What was that? Where was it? At 8.36pm panic and pandemonium reigned in the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Hilton hotel