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.
