Ali Vitali: The WHCD Hammers Home How Consistent Political Violence Has Become

RUSH EXCERPT:

VITALI: “I mean, look, I think all of us were facing sort of the same direction, alicia, in that the way that we were sitting, we were facing partly towards the dais, but then also toward the the top tier of this ballroom, which is sort of a sunken ballroom. You’ve got to go down two steps in order to get to the main floor where we were seated, and all I could see was, out of nowhere, a crush of people running into the room. And then people start shouting, get down! And shots fired. That’s why it was so immediate, me telling you and simone, get down on the floor. And for viewers, I mean, four hours ago, alicia and I were under a table holding hands, texting our parents and partners, telling them that we were okay, or at least trying to be okay, trying to get a sense of what was happening in that room. It was petrifying. It was surreal. It was sad. At one point, I had one phone in the air trying to get a zoomed in version of the dais, just to get a sense of who’s still up there. What’s going on? Did they get the president out of the room in time? Because all we could hear in a very quiet room, as Ken Dilanian was talking about, were the sound of various guns and the sound that it made as people were running in, as they were holding them. It was otherwise extremely quiet. Maybe you heard a fork hit a plate as people were jostling under the table, but it was such an eerie feeling."