Speculation swirls after Fox reporter recounts chilling remarks before WHCD shooting

Speculation swirled Sunday morning after a viral clip captured Fox News reporter Aishah Hasnie recounting chilling remarks from Nicholas Riccio – the husband of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – made just moments before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) shooting, with the call also appearing to drop mid-sentence.

The annual WHCD was disrupted Saturday night by a shooting after a suspected armed gunman “charged at a Secret Service checkpoint” at the event. President Donald Trump and other administration officials were evacuated without incident, while one Secret Service agent was hospitalized after being shot by the suspected gunman.

Amid the chaos, Hasnie, who was attending the WHCD, phoned into Fox News to recount remarks Riccio made to her moments before the shooting.

“He was seated right next to me, and right as the dinner was starting, he leaned over and said ‘I’ve watched you on TV, you do a great job – you need to be very safe,’” Hasnie said. “And he was very serious when he said that to me, and he kind of looked around the room and he said, ‘there are some…’

The phone call appeared to have dropped mid-sentence, with the clip of Hasnie’s remarks sparking an online firestorm.

“I definitely wanted to hear what she had to say,” wrote Trisha Hope, a conservative Texas-based political activist and Jan. 6 advocate, in a social media post on X.

“I want to hear the rest of what she had to say,” wrote journalist Cassandra MacDonald Sunday on X.

Speculation around the clip had grown so strong that Hasnie apparently felt compelled to provide an explanation early Sunday morning, telling her more than 103,000 followers on X that the call likely dropped due to poor cellular service in the event space. She also shared the remainder of what she intended to say before the call apparently dropped.

“To finish the story, he was telling me to be careful with my own safety because the world is crazy,” Hasnie wrote. “Which is what my own father and other people have also said to me recently. He was expressing his concern for my safety. I was going to say – before I lost my signal – that it was unfortunate that only a short time later, this all happened.”

However, comments made before the shooting by Leavitt – where she hyped up Trump’s impending speech at the event by saying “there will be some shots fired tonight” – continued to fuel mass speculation from critics.

“A Fox News correspondent saying Karoline Leavitt’s husband told her to be safe *BEFORE* the shooting,” wrote journalist and professor Adam Cochran in a social media post on X.

“This was after Leavitt’s earlier comments that everyone should watch tonight because there will be ‘shots fired.’ This doesn’t help the conspiracy theories.”