At the exact moment dozens of armed federal agents swarmed into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, Oz Pearlman was revealing to Donald Trump the name of Karoline Leavitt’s unborn daughter.
The mentalist was perhaps moments away from climbing inside the mind of the president on Saturday night when a 31-year-old teacher from Los Angeles stormed toward the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with two guns and fired at law enforcement. Nobody was killed, and the suspect is in custody.
“My son was mostly concerned with whether he had an autographed Pokémon card from Donald Trump,” Pearlman tells Variety from the back of an Uber, moments after landing in New York from Washington, D.C. His usually peppy voice is hoarse. (“Long night,” he says.)
Before the annual, bipartisan celebration began, Pearlman met Trump and the First Lady backstage, where Trump expressed enthusiasm for his act. This year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner marked the first attended by Trump during either of his terms, and also the first to be headlined by a mentalist.
“He shook my hand and told me he’s heard how great I am, and that he’s very excited and he’s staying for my show,” Pearlman says. “That was a big checkmark because that was never a sure thing. Right away, I texted my wife, ‘Great news. The show is gonna be awesome.’”
Out in the ballroom, right after the Pledge of Allegiance kicked off the event, Pearlman immediately began working the room. “I didn’t take one bite of salad,” he says. “I got to work.” He eventually made his way up to the dais, impressing JD Vance with a couple of magic tricks. (Pearlman, who has become Hollywood’s favorite mentalist, is known to guess people’s ATM pins and predict the outcome of seemingly random events.)
Vance encouraged Pearlman to perform for the POTUS, and CBS anchor Weijia Jiang helped bring the mentalist into Trump’s conversation with Press Sec. Leavitt and Melania Trump. Backstage, Leavitt had challenged Pearlman to guess the name of her baby, who is due next week. Wanting to save the trick for Trump, Pearlman finally began “piecing together” the name, and he is seen in news coverage writing down “Vivian” on a sheet of notebook paper. Just as Pearlman ripped out the page to show it to Leavitt, Melania and the president, a crisis consumed the ballroom of the D.C. hotel.
“You could see the reaction to the trick, where everybody was like, ‘Whoa!’ But at that exact same moment, we saw dozens of people with guns — a SWAT team and military — running into the center of the room as people started getting under their tables,” Pearlman recalls. He thought there was about to be an explosion, so he immediately dropped to the floor as two Secret Service agents “shoved” Trump to the ground.
“He lands right next to me,” Pearlman says of the president. “We’re looking eye to eye from a foot apart, and I’m thinking, Oh no, are we about to die?”
That’s when he heard gunshots.
Pearlman says Trump seemed “startled” that he was on the ground, but he was “very aware.” “I can’t tell you if he was scared,” Pearlman says. “I have to assume there was fear in all of us, because it was a very serious situation.” About two seconds later, the president was shuffled out of the room.
“I was thinking, Did he get shot? Everything slowed down. I couldn’t figure out what happened,” Pearlman says. He began army-crawling toward the door backstage, where he stood for several minutes protected by federal agents. “There was no real communication,” he says. “We heard someone was dead, and then we heard there was a shooter, and then we heard they were trying to see if there were any other shooters.”
Backstage, everyone was crying and shaking, Pearlman says. “Your body gets flooded with adrenaline. You’re in full fight-or-flight.” Still, the shooter didn’t stop the mentalist and his wife and manager, Elisa, from attending an after-party.
“It was bittersweet,” Pearlman says of the evening. “The sweet thing is nothing really happened. Nobody was hurt. But the bitter part is that it was going to be an amazing night. I had some really unique and exceptional things planned that would have hit strong. I’m sad to not have had that moment, but given the circumstances, that’s a very secondary concern.”
Pearlman declined to tease the tricks he had planned for the president, as Trump has promised to attend a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner to be set within the next 30 days. Pearlman says he has been invited back, and “if I can make myself available, I would love to be there.”
For now, Pearlman is reading the “insane” internet conspiracy theories and laughing off the dark jokes on social media.
“If I had been killed, people would forever have said, ‘Why didn’t you see that coming?’” Pearlman says. “Like, that’s the worst way for a mentalist to die, because the memes are just too good.”
