One Grenade From President Grassley

While American sailors held watch in a closed Strait of Hormuz, six of the top seven officials in line for the presidency aggregated in one ballroom to hear the President rip the press.

The Gist:

On April 25, 2026, an armed man breached the outer perimeter of the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. He was stopped at a magnetometer before reaching the ballroom. Inside that ballroom were the President, the First Lady, and twelve officials in the statutory line of presidential succession, including six of the top seven. The country was sixty days into an undeclared war with Iran whose stated end criterion was a feeling in the President’s bones. There is no public evidence that a designated survivor was identified for the event. There is no federal continuity doctrine that governs the voluntary aggregation of statutory successors at non-official gatherings. There is, however, a 1981 Treasury Department after-action report on the last time a President was attacked at this hotel that warned: “Less favorable circumstances can be easily imagined.” Forty-five years later, those circumstances arrived.