On Sunday morning, diplomats, journalists and assorted members of the sports-coated classes gathered at the British ambassador’s residence.

Sir Christian Turner had not planned to speak at the CNN-sponsored brunch. There wasn’t even a stage.

So he addressed the crowd from the top of a stepladder.

“It’s a bit more of a somber context this morning than many of us expected, after a difficult night last night, and I’m absolutely thrilled to see so many of you here enjoying being together and coming together,” he said.

The audience included Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Oz, and Linda Carter, the original Wonder Woman.

Sir Christian praised the professionalism of the Secret Service in keeping everyone safe and that of the journalists at the Washington Hilton who had immediately switched from party mode to reporting mode at the sound of violence.

He admitted he had had little sleep. The Brits have the small matter of the King and Queen arriving later today for their State Visit, and Buckingham Palace officials had been in constant touch with the White House and the embassy.

“If there’s any operational planning we need to change, we will. But I’m very confident that security will be absolutely assured. 

“So in sum, ladies and gentlemen, it’s very British: Keep calm and carry on,” he said, raising a mug of tea.

Privately, officials know the biggest danger to the King comes when he is in proximity to Trump. Those meetings are at the White House, which is as close to a fortress as you can possibly get.

The King and Queen Camilla will also be guests of honor at a garden party at the British residence on Monday.

Sunday’s brunch was one of the traditional closing events of correspondents’ dinner weekend. Most of the parties went ahead as planned, albeit after additional security reviews.

Not everyone thought it was the right response.

“People were still partying, still hitting WHCD afterparties last night. Epstein corruption, an escalating Iran conflict, and an active shooter — and Washington just… kept going,” posted journalist Tara Palmieri, who didn’t have a ticket to the dinner. “The cognitive dissonance is the system.”

Yet the parties, after-parties and brunches were a place to check in on each other. A time for hugs and emotional debriefs.

Hours earlier, hundreds of journalists had sprung into action in the Hilton ballroom, trying to pierce the fog of confusion in the aftermath of the shooting.

INSIDE THE ROOM: TERROR AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

As Secret Service agents raced up and down the tables, plucking Cabinet Secretaries and senior White House officials to safety, journalists poked heads and smartphones from beneath tablecloths to survey the scene.

“I think we want to ask if there is a tug of war behind the scenes between the White House Correspondents Association and Secret Service,” one editor could be heard saying as he rallied his troops, asking them to find out whether the evening would resume (it did not), “And whether Trump has inserted himself into the middle of it.”

Someone should have also asked the night’s entertainer, mentalist Oz Pearlman, why he didn’t see this coming.

Reporters collected undrunk bottles of wine from empty tables as they left (one editor dropped two bottles as he tried to conceal them under his tuxedo), reassembling in a bar upstairs. It quickly became a temporary newsroom. A well lubricated newsroom.

Terror returned briefly. The pop of a Champagne bottle being uncorked clumsily sent dozens of hearts racing and more than one person scrambling for cover.

A Daily Beast editor tried to return to his room, only to find the floor cordoned off. He had spent the previous night sleeping in the room next to that of the would-be assassin.

Among the guests who recorded video in the ballroom during the chaos and confusion was Norm Eisen, lawyer, former ambassador and high-profile Trump critic.

His plans for the night had been upended just like everyone else’s.

“I was going to walk out in protest,” he told Secrets as the ballroom emptied. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

Kash calm under fire

Kash Patel, the FBI director, is under intense pressure. He is tipped to be the next senior official to be fired by Trump amid claims about his alcohol intake, claims which he denies, and a blockbuster lawsuit against The Atlantic 

On Saturday night he was a guest of the Daily Mail. And Secrets learned everyone around him was impressed by his reaction to the gunshots. 

He checked that the tables around him were ducking and covering as the chaos unfolded. 

He stayed in his seat assessing the danger, said one witness, making sure guests were safe.

“Then he apologized, saying he was sorry that he couldn’t do more,” said a source, “but he had to leave so he could lead the investigation.”

Minutes later, he was in the White House briefing room at a hurried press conference, standing beside the president. A quick investigation and prosecution, a report on lessons learned, could be his way back into good graces.

A very personal invitation

King Charles III and Queen Camilla land in Washington today for their state visit. Secrets will be at their garden party later in the day.

Secrets can also reveal how the invitation was delivered to the King. 

It came during Trump’s own state visit to Britain last year, during his time at Windsor Castle. 

The King invited the president to join him in his private quarters for a bit of one-to-one time when all their officials, security agents, and hangers-on were gathered for the banquet in the grandeur of the castle’s St George’s Hall.

The moment wasn’t scheduled, but the King’s personal touch wowed the president who asked Charles to visit him at the White House in the year of America’s 250th anniversary.

His aides had not been informed of the plan. But an official let the cat out of the bag as Air Force One took off from London.

“It was a really fantastic trip. The British know how to do this perfectly,” the official texted. “They set the bar high for their trip to see us.”

WHEN CHARLES III MEETS DONALD TRUMP

A formal invitation still had to be set up, with diaries synchronized and so on. But the wheels were already turning.

And it marked the quiet culmination of a plan hatched years earlier by Dame Karen Pierce, the then British ambassador in Washington. 

Although she left last year, she had impressed on her own officials and the government in London that the 250th anniversary of American Independence was the perfect time for the King to visit the White House, carrying with it echoes of Queen Elizabeth II’s hugely successful visit for the 200th in 1976.

Lunchtime reading

A curmudgeon writes: Veteran foreign correspondent Nick Bryant describes the White House correspondents’ dinners he attended as a young reporter, and why his view on them soured. Do the even have a future?

“He didn’t enjoy it that much”: what happened when Prince Charles went to a baseball game in 1970: “They left after eight hits, next to no excitement, two unearned Senators runs, and the thermometer registered 91 degrees”. There’s no trip to Nats Park on the itinerary this time around. Just as well.

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