Donald Trump said on Saturday night he initially thought that the sound of a gunman charging a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was a tray falling, in his first remarks about what was going through his mind as the incident unfolded.

“Actually, it was totally shocking to me, and that never changes,” Trump said, appearing to refer to the assassination attempt against him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a second incident on his golf course in Florida during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“I heard a noise, and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down many times,” he said. “There was a gun and some people really understood that quite quickly. Other people didn’t. I was watching to see what was happening, probably should have gotten down a little faster.

“Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened,” Trump said of his wife, who has been among the members of his family most concerned about security even before Trump faced assassination attempts. “I think she knew immediately. She was saying ‘it’s a bad noise.’”

The US president’s description of his reaction to the episode came at a hastily arranged news conference in the briefing room at the White House, where he had been rushed back by motorcade ahead of a number of other senior cabinet officials who had attended the dinner.

Asked why he thought he keeps being the target of assassination attempts, Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, and said: “The people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much, because they like it that way.”

Still wearing his black tie dinner jacket, Trump was joined at the lectern by the vice-president, JD Vance, the FBI director, Kash Patel, the acting US attorney general, Todd Blanche, and the homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin.

To the side of the room stood his wife, Melania Trump, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Trump’s longtime aide Dan Scavino squeezed into the briefing room behind them.

Trump had emerged into the briefing room with his brow furrowed and appeared to pause at the threshold, as if still contemplating what had transpired at the dinner, before opening his remarks by ticking through updates on the gunman.

“He was a sick person, a very sick person,” Trump said. “He was running full blast, and they got him before he got any further. I was very far away, he wasn’t anywhere close to breaching the doors of the ballroom. My impression is he was a lone wolf wack job.”

He said it was too early to know whether the gunman had political motivations or if he was spurred by the US’s war against Iran, but said the man – pictured shirtless and on the ground in a post Trump sent on social media – was from California and appeared to be working alone.

Trump said the gunman fired on a US Secret Service agent, who was saved by his bulletproof vest. He said he thought law enforcement were going to the gunman’s apartment as he offered general praise for the agency, saying he thought they did a better job than at the Butler rally.

When the incident unfolded, Trump had been seated on the high table inside the ballroom at the Washington DC Hilton hotel, where the dinner has been held for decades, in conversation with his wife and the president of the correspondents’ association, the CBS News journalist Weijia Jiang.

As the sound of gunfire rang out, US Secret Service agents rushed to cover the president’s head and pushed them out of the ballroom. As other agents waded through the banquet tables to extract other cabinet officials, the gunman was apprehended in the lobby area, outside the room.

Trump also suggested that he might not have run for president if Rubio, his 2016 presidential campaign rival who is now his secretary of state and national security adviser, had warned him about the potential of assassination attempts.

“It’s a dangerous profession,” Trump joked. “Nobody told me this was such a dangerous thing. If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn’t have run. I’ll take a pass.” Still, he added: “It’s a dangerous profession but I don’t view it that way. I’m here to do a job.”