Who is Weijia Jiang, the journalist seated beside Trump during the WHCA shooting scare?

29th 2026 – (Washington) Weijia Jiang, a senior White House correspondent for CBS News, was the Chinese-American journalist seated immediately to President Donald Trump’s left when gunshots were heard at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday. As WHCA president, Jiang had spent months organising the black‑tie gala, which Trump attended as president for the first time after years of boycotting the event.

When the commotion began, Secret Service agents surged onto the stage, shouting for those present to get down. Jiang dropped to her hands and knees and crawled, recalling later that she “didn’t have a second thought” and moved “as fast as I could”. She and the president were evacuated behind the stage as agents formed a protective ring; video from the ballroom showed Vice President JD Vance being swiftly led away from the opposite end of the dais.

Jiang said the initial sound resembled an explosion and that she did not immediately grasp what was happening. She ultimately exited the hall alongside Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and others. Outside, she heard security briefings indicating a shooting incident and recounted that Trump was intent on ensuring the dinner would still be completed. He later phoned her, she said, to suggest finding a new date, insisting the event was “very important”.

Hours later at the White House, Trump opened a late‑night news conference still in evening dress and called on Jiang to put the first question. He also praised her stewardship of the dinner — an unusual public compliment given their sometimes testy history during his first term.

Jiang, 42, is the first woman of colour to lead the WHCA. She has covered the White House since 2017 and won an Emmy in 2023. Born in Xiamen, China, she moved to the United States at the age of two and grew up in West Virginia. She earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Syracuse University in 2006 and was inducted into the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ Professional Gallery in 2012.

The reporter first came to wider prominence in 2020 after a pointed exchange with Trump over Covid‑19 testing during a White House briefing. According to local reporting, she is said to earn about HK$2 million annually.

During Saturday’s dinner, Jiang had been in conversation with Trump on stage as the Marine Corps Band concluded The Star‑Spangled Banner. Moments before the incident, the room’s attention had been on a performance by mentalist Oz Pearlman for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, with Melania Trump watching closely — a scene Jiang later described as the last calm image she remembers before “chaos unfolded”.