April 26, 2026, 3:26 p.m. ET
Oz Pearlman has revealed the trick he was performing when shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
“The night was going very, very well. I was warming up the crowd, the VP was loving my show, and I was speaking to the press secretary,” he tells USA TODAY. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is expecting her second baby with husband Nicholas Riccio any day. “The challenge was to figure out the name of her unborn daughter,” Pearlman recalls.
The mentalist did just that. He turned his notepad around to reveal the name Viviane.
“I never would have shared this with the world, the point is not to ‘gotcha’ her. But I spoke to her and she said it’s OK to share,” he says. “ ‘This is a moment in history,’ she told me. When it happened, she said, ‘I don’t know how the hell you guessed my daughter’s name.’ “
In a text, Leavitt confirmed that Pearlman’s account is accurate.
“The timing was insane,” he adds. “Right as I did the reveal, that’s exactly the moment things went down in the room. So you see the peak reaction to my trick, the ‘Oh!’ And then things instantly change to shock and distress.”
Within moments, he was on the ground with President Donald Trump. “Seeing his face a foot away − I’ll never forget that,” he says. “It’s a photo in my mind forever. I wish I had meta glasses on and I’d have that photo.”
He doesn’t have words to characterize the president’s reaction, he says. “I saw someone who was surprised because the Secret Service acts really fast and very sudden.”
Oz Pearlman says security at the White House press dinner wasn’t as tight as other red carpet events
Pearlman noticed that security was different at the hotel compared to other red carpet events he has attended. “I can’t speak to what was or wasn’t done. But I did find there was ease of movement,” he says. “I was not restricted at the same level of other events. Usually there is checkpoint after checkpoint.”
He didn’t see anything specific that gave him concerns, but did notice they didn’t restrict access to the venue. “I saw makeup and hair people coming in an hour before. Hindsight is always 20/20. I didn’t feel endangered, but there was not the rigorous checks I’ve been put through at other red carpets like the Golden Globes where there have been three to four checkpoints, scanned bar codes, not just paper tickets. Really ring after ring of security around the venue.”
He applauds the work of the Secret Service. “The Secret Service moved so incredibly fast; anyone who says it was a failure, that’s ridiculous. It was a success and no one died. There will always be finger-pointing.” Moments later, they were whisked backstage, where the scene was “chaos.”
Did Pearlman, as a mentalist, see the tragedy coming?
“I’ve seen the memes, the jokes write themselves. I would be haunted forever that I, as a mentalist, didn’t see that coming,” he says lightheartedly of online chatter that he should have predicted the event. “One, I am not a psychic, I wish I were. Two, my job is not to assess security threats. I entertain and create memorable events.”
Now that everyone is safe, and the adrenaline rush is over, he can look back with a little more perspective on the night. “Bittersweet is the way I’d describe it. When you experience something like this, which is surreal when it happens, it feels like you’re in some sort of a movie. You have the awareness that I’m OK and that my wife is OK, and the president, of course.”
His initial fear was not that it was an active shooter, but it was a bomb. “I was bracing, thinking the room was about to explode,” he says. His wife was on the far side of the room. “She had pretty bad seats,” he says, but planned to move to the center of the room during his performance. “That would have been the worst position. She would have been right at the center of the dais for the show, so that was a silver lining,” he says.
He admits he thinks about the show he had lined up. “That’s what I really wanted everyone to be talking about,” he says. “Best show of my life.”
Pearlman says he’d come back for a rescheduled event
The mentalist doesn’t hesitate about the idea of returning for the dinner, which President Trump said he’d like to be rescheduled within 30 days. “For sure,” he says, but also acknowledging the logistics at play. “That’s a huge event to organize in 30 days or less. If they can move earth, water and sea, I would do it.”
He’d likely change up the great show he had planned. “I don’t know if I can do the exact same show; I think it will be similar, but not same. It would have to take a different note,” he says.
“Terrorist or assassins who believe that violence is the answer, we have to show they can’t win,” he says. “Are we not going to have events? Are we not going to have football games? No, you have to live your life. I was very honored to celebrate the First Amendment and the freedom of the press and everything that dinner represents.”
Contributing: Brendan Morrow
