Trump to speak in West Palm Beach ballroom after scare at DC hotel

• President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak in West Palm Beach following a recent alleged assassination attempt in Washington.
• Security is expected to be significantly increased for the event, with more personnel and potential snipers.
• The article notes this is the third assassination attempt on Trump in the past two years.
• Historians compare the current climate of political violence to the era between the 1960s and 1980s.

WEST PALM BEACH — President Donald Trump returns to his adopted home county for a Friday, May 1, ballroom speech less than a week after his planned remarks in a similar setting back in Washington were disrupted by what federal prosecutors allege was an assassination attempt.

The president is scheduled to speak to an evening gathering of the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches at the Kravis Center in downtown West Palm Beach.

Security experts say they expect the Secret Service and protective agencies will be in full force after accused gunman Allen Cole launched a one-man assault aimed at Trump and administration leaders at the April 25 White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel.

Ross Thompson, a former government intelligence operative who now runs Covac Global, a security and crisis-evacuation firm, said he would expect the president's entourage for the West Palm Beach event will include more counter-assault personnel and even snipers.

"What they're really going to have to do now is they're just going to have to put more bodies in front of him," Thompson said. "Going forward they are just going to have to put more and more people within that entire concentric circle that is closest to him and the government officials with him."

The president's speech will take place on the same day as another round of local and nationwide “Workers Over Billionaires” protests are planned, further raising the temperature in Palm Beach County public spaces.

"Today, as billionaires accumulate unprecedented wealth, we’re continuing that fight for an economy that serves all of us, not just a powerful few,” said Julie and Jay Levy, co-chairs of Indivisible Boca Raton’s protest and rally team, in a prepared statement.

Kravis a different setting for Trump speech than Washington Hilton

There did not appear to be any additional, temporary special security barriers being installed at the Kravis Center's outside perimeter at midweek. When Trump spoke on election night 2024 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, located almost across the street from the Kravis, the facility was ringed by tall metal fencing that created a protective shell.

The advantage of the Kravis event is a smaller, more vetted audience, experts say. The $225 tickets for the speech are reserved for club members and one guest each — as opposed to the correspondents dinner at a hotel with 1,000 rooms in addition to the attendees at the gala.

The attempt by Cole, who rushed past the initial security perimeter armed with a shotgun, .38-caliber pistol and knives, was the third assassination attempt on Trump within the past two years.

The chronology of incidents include shots fired at Trump during a rally days before the Republic National Convention in July 2024. The then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee was grazed in the ear by a bullet while one attendee was killed and two others were seriously wounded.

Two months later, a Secret Service agent spotted another assailant hiding in a tree line at the Trump International Golf Club, located just miles from Mar-a-Lago, while the former president and presidential candidate was on the course.

Ryan Routh, a North Carolina man, is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him on charges of attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, assault of a federal law enforcement officer and multiple firearms offenses.

There have been other incidents at Trump's properties but not involving the president.

On Feb. 22, a 21-year-old man was shot and killed on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago after agents and a Palm Beach County Sheriff Office deputy said he raised what appeared to be a shotgun in a "shooting position." Trump was not at the Winter White House that weekend.

In 2018, during Trump's first term, a man intruded into the lobby of the Trump National Doral Golf Club resort in western Miami-Dade County and opened fire. The shooter was arrested after he was engaged by police. The president was not on the property that evening.

There have been other suspicious incidents, including the spotting last October of a hunting tree stand within the site of the presidential motorcade route to Palm Beach International Airport, and the rerouting of the motorcade due to a "suspicious" item found in the PBIA vicinity in January.

Security needs amid era U.S. political violence

Thompson, the security expert, said officials involved in presidential security will acknowledge a changed world. The traditional practice of relying on threat intelligence, methodology and protocols has likely been overwhelmed by the amount of chatter on social media, he said.

Thompson said it is unrealistic to expect the Secret Service will investigate and stop all threats beforehand given "all the comments on social media" in addition to reviewing "every creepy letter to the White House."

In the case of the Washington Hilton attack, Thompson said one lesson learned is that more personnel are needed to contain an assailant who races past security, as videos showed Allen doing. Especially, he added, in a time of heightened security watchfulness and alerts because of the war in Iran.

"So, yeah, you might see traffic stops, you might see a bunch of things. You might see a higher presence for counter-assaulting on the periphery," he said. "Right now they're, unfortunately, having to learn lessons very quickly. The lesson that was taught to them at the Hilton is more assets and resources are needed."

The concerns Thompson raised have been echoed by U.S. historians who have posited that the United States seems mired in an era of political violence reminiscent of the one between the early 1960s and 1980s. That span of time was bookended by the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

During that timeframe, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were murdered. Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist leader, was partially paralyzed in a 1972 shooting as he campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president.

There were two attempts on the life of President Gerald Ford in 1975. The incidents took place over the span of 17 days in September of that year.

"We feel like we're in the late '60s being in the throes of all these shootings," said presidential historian Robert Watson at Lynn University in Boca Raton in the fall of 2025, right after the murder of political activist Charlie Kirk. "And it's not just the shootings, but the palpable threat of a shooting, too."

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.