Secretary of State Marco Rubio probably didn’t really want to be there.
At least, that’s the impression I got when when he gave a brief interview to C-SPAN on the red carpet before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. A reporter asked him why the event was “important.”
Rubio’s response? “Well, I don’t know if it’s important or not — I came because I was invited.”
The secretary admitted he’d only been once before (in 2011), and when the reporter asked him why he hasn’t been to other ones, he said, “I don’t know. It wasn’t my thing. I’d rather be back in Florida on Saturdays than be here…”
Same, Mr. Secretary. Give me Florida — or home — over some hoity-toity Washington, D.C. event any day of the week. I’m sure many of us can relate. But he did admit that he was there that night to support the president. Here’s the full interview:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) speaks to C-SPAN on #WHCA Dinner Red Carpet. pic.twitter.com/m2Q3GtY1Qf
— CSPAN (@cspan) April 25, 2026
Little did Rubio know that an hour or two later, the event would be cut short and he’d duck under a table to potentially save his own life.
🚨| El momento en el que Marco Rubio se agacha durante la cena de corresponsales.
El servicio secreto le pide que baje la cabeza. Minutos antes de ser evacuado. pic.twitter.com/WVMIsMoJR2
— Orlando Avendaño (@OrlvndoA) April 26, 2026
The secretary sat down with Fox News’ Trey Yingst for an interview on Monday, and he talked about the events that unfolded on Saturday night. He says he never actually heard the gunshots, but he saw the “security people” rushing in and knew something was up.
So the first thing you wonder immediately, just knowing kind of what’s out there, is is there an internal threat, is there a threat inside of the ballroom itself. And then the second is what – are they dealing with some mass event that’s happening from the outside in? So – but I saw them follow all the security protocols. I was watching the security steps they took around the President. It was pretty apparent at that point that they were trying to remove him from the scene, as is appropriate.
But Rubio sort of admitted that he wasn’t all that surprised by what happened.
“So look, I mean, it was sort of an unfortunate situation that happened there, where one individual can disrupt what is one of the bigger nights in Washington, especially when the President attends,” he said, adding, “So that’s kind of the world we live in right now.”
He said that once they went backstage, the top priority was “continuity of government” and ensuring the president, vice president, and speaker of the House were safe and secure. Then, there was the decision about what to do next:
And of course when you have a breach like this, even if it’s this limited breach, you don’t know if that’s a distraction so that five other guys can get in and create damage or not. The point is you lose sort of the sterility of the place. You would have almost have had to remove everybody in order to bring everybody back in the room. The President really wanted to move forward. Like he wanted to go forward; he didn’t care. He was ready to go. But in the end, I think it was the wise decision to move it another 30 days and reschedule it, because to get everybody out of that room and screen them all and bring them back in would have been hours.
Yingst asked Rubio about this now iconic photo of the president that was released on Sunday, in which he’s sitting in the Oval Office, surrounded by some of his top advisors, watching the surveillance video. He wanted to know what the president told his team in that moment.
4/25/26 | 10:15pmEDT pic.twitter.com/4GBWxokOQ2
— Dan Scavino (@Scavino47) April 26, 2026
Rubio responded by talking about Donald Trump’s transparency and desire to speak to the American people, as well as the need to move forward without this becoming a major distraction:
Well, what’s interesting and really fascinating and, I think, admirable about the President is his interest in transparency. There were a couple people that felt like maybe we shouldn’t put the video out because it’s an active investigation, and I don’t think this endangers the active investigation. I thought, for the President, his belief that it should be immediately available to the American people shows how committed he is to transparency. It also helps tamp down fools that are out there talking about conspiracy theories and false flags and all this craziness.
But I think the President’s decision to return to the White House, release the video, and then address the American people in a press conference – with many of the people that were in that room now at the White House in their tuxedos asking questions – was – really showed a lot of leadership by the President and I think calmed the nation down and I think has allowed us to pivot towards the investigation and move on with the work of the country.
He makes a good point. It is the kind of world we live in right now, but the show must go on.
I am grateful the president and secretary and everyone else in that room were safe, but threats to their lives are something they’re used to, sadly. We’ve seen the president survive three assassination attempts now. We know now that numerous members of the Cabinet, including Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, have had to move onto a military base due to threats to their lives. A month or so ago, I think I mentioned in an article that Rubio had to up his security back in, I want to say, 2017, because old Diosdado Cabello down in Venezuela was threatening to have him killed. I’m sure there’s so much more than we don’t even know.
The president even hinted at this on Saturday night — we can’t stop because things like this happen. We can’t let them stop us from living our lives. And we can’t let it stop the Trump administration from carrying out the important work it’s doing for our country.
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