Jonathan Lehr

Developer, teacher, and author focused on Apple's iOS, macOS, and visionOS platforms. Co-Founder and VP of Training at About Objects. #Bitcoin enthusiast.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@TexasChance @shaunvlog_ Wow!

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@shaunvlog_ Nailed it!

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@shaunvlog_ Haha, love this. Welcome to America!

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@koshercockney Iran must be free! Javid Shah!

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@nicksortor New Jersey State Police are no joke.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@TheDemocrats @StephenM This is what passes for political discourse in the modern Democratic Party, I guess. Not even clever snark, just playground taunts worthy of a potty-mouthed 9-year old.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@atensnut Hysterical! 🤣

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@Ilhan Let's not turn this into World War 12.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@physicsgeek "What a world!"

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@SkipTra42382733 @bennyjohnson 🤣😂🤣

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our Fourth Estate.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago.

A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced.

That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details.

I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column.

I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@theblaze Oof! How can someone that ignorant serve in any elected office, much less the U.S. Congress?

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@WallStreetApes Clearly a history buff.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@feelthebern624 @McCormickProf So by that logic, you're attacking me by disagreeing with my comment. Thankfully, I don't see it that way at all. There's nothing wrong with honest disagreement and vigorous debate to my mind.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@feelthebern624 @McCormickProf That’s a mischaracterization. The comments I’ve read attack his argument, not him personally.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@RapidResponse47 It's hard to tell from the low-resolution CCTV footage, but it appears to me there's an exchange of gunfire as the suspect tries to run through the checkpoint, with the suspect and at least one member of the security detail being hit.

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

A man cannot serve as both a political operative and the Vicar of Christ.

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24)

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve;" (Joshua 24:15)

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@vested_opinions @nicksortor Technology to the rescue!

[Jonathan Lehr @jlehr]

@MikeBenzCyber Their basic message seems to be "EFF off."