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. There were men running and cries of “Get down!” and “Stay down!”