President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0said Tuesday that he\u00a0slipped away from Air Force One\u00a0after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a \u201cdifferent plane\u201d due to a threat that he insisted didn\u2019t scare him.<\/p>\n
\n
Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the subterfuge involved in his flight, which saw him stow away in an airport catering container to sneak onto another plane while Air Force One was sent into the sky, essentially as a decoy.<\/p>\n
He also downplayed the risk to the people \u2014 White House officials, security and support staff, and reporters \u2014 he left on the plane.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey wanted me to go on a different flight, different plane,\u201d Trump told reporters after returning from an event in Ohio, saying he had little choice in the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess there was a threat out there. I didn\u2019t really ask too much about it,\u201d he said. \u201cI get a lot of threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments confirmed a report that first appeared in The Washington Post saying that Trump, following a\u00a0NATO summit\u00a0last month, was spirited onto a different plane because of a credible threat from Iran. The action was kept secret for weeks, until the newspaper\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,\u201d Trump said Tuesday, who did not provide many details about the action. But he said the incident did not scare him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t worry about anything, to be honest,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWhatever it is. You know my attitude? Whatever!\u201d<\/p>\n
Presidents often take secret trips \u2014 but not like this<\/h4>\n
Commanders in chief have sometimes kept\u00a0overseas trips\u00a0covert for security reasons, with schedules and logistics kept classified until after for safety reasons. But the fact that Trump\u2019s whereabouts were concealed at the time and for weeks afterward is believed to be unprecedented.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have absolutely seen the president fly on unmarked or decoy planes before, into Iraq, Afghanistan, other war-zone-like places,\u201d said Garrett M. Graff, author of \u201cRaven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government\u2019s Secret Plan to Save Itself \u2014 While the Rest of Us Die.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this was an ongoing secret that I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve ever seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n
After hiding in the catering vehicle and being moved to the other plane, Trump stopped in Britain, sneaked back aboard the presidential plane undetected, and even later scoffed when asked about potential danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I go, you go. Right?\u201d he told reporters then \u2014 gliding past the fact that if the plane had been shot down, the president wouldn\u2019t have been aboard.<\/p>\n
Many details about what happened remain unknown<\/h4>\n
The president\u2019s flight out of Turkey\u00a0made headlines at the time\u00a0because he had arrived aboard a luxury jet\u00a0gifted by Qatar,\u00a0which\u00a0was not equipped\u00a0with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems found on older presidential jets.<\/p>\n
Trump ended up traveling in a smaller government aircraft from Turkey to the United Kingdom, only to secretly reboard the decoy jet, then descend from it and climb back aboard the Qatari plane.<\/p>\n
Presidents have regularly tested the confines of their office, pushing their security advisers to visit war zones as a show of American presence and their own leadership. Usually, this happens in the form of trips that aren\u2019t announced until the president is deemed to be out of harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s different this time is that Trump was covertly separated from the rest of his travelers \u2014 including the press pool meant to provide independent coverage of the president and his actions \u2014 and, instead of informing the public about what occurred once the risk had passed, the White House still hasn\u2019t fully revealed what took place.<\/p>\n
Graff said the presence of the White House press corps is as much about protecting \u201cthe presidency and democracy\u201d as it is about covering the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shows that the White House just fundamentally doesn\u2019t understand how important that role is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Officials have gone to great lengths to keep presidents safe on covert trips before<\/h4>\n
In 2023, a motorcade pulled away from the White House\u00a0around 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday, and President\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0later boarded an Air Force C-32, a modified Boeing 757 normally used for domestic trips to smaller airports, and flew to Poland. Biden then took a secret, 10-hour overnight train ride to Kyiv meant to show solidarity with Ukraine after Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n
A press pool at the White House had been expecting a quiet Sunday for Biden in Washington. However, two journalists went to Ukraine with him and documented the trip, capturing images of Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walking together.<\/p>\n
In Trump\u2019s first term, he made a secret Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan in 2019, when officials kept a separate press pool and decoy plane in Florida to maintain the illusion that the president was spending the holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate.<\/p>\n
Instead, Trump and another group of reporters flew to the U.S. military base at Bagram, where the president served turkey to troops, gave a speech and met with Afghanistan\u2019s then-president, Ashraf Ghani, while journalists documented what was occurring.<\/p>\n
When President George W. Bush made his first trip to Iraq in 2003, news was not released until he was in the air on the way back to the United States. President Barack Obama made a furtive nighttime visit to Afghanistan in 2010, when he was meant to be spending the weekend at Camp David.<\/p>\n
Other risky trips featured presidential misdirection<\/h4>\n
President Bill Clinton went secretly from India to Pakistan in 2000, attempting to calm tensions in the disputed Kashmir region. He was seen talking with officials in front of a military plane that he appeared to board. Instead, Clinton ducked around the front of the aircraft to another jet parked nearby.<\/p>\n
Both planes took off for Islamabad, as did a third jet painted with the familiar baby blue markings of Air Force One.<\/p>\n
Joe Lockhart, a White House press secretary for Clinton, noted that reporters knew the president was on one of the planes, \u201cbut not which one.\u201d He said he and other officials had briefed the press pool ahead of time and \u201calthough they didn\u2019t know all the details, it was made clear\u201d that Clinton \u201cwas not going to travel on the plane they were on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no attempt to hide anything, much less lie about it later,\u201d Lockhart wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and, after all commercial air traffic was grounded, officials wanted to move him to an undisclosed location.<\/p>\n
The full White House traveling press pool flew with Bush from Florida to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where officials reduced the number of reporters and staff on the plane. Bush and the smaller traveling party next flew to Nebraska\u2019s Offutt Air Force Base before eventually returning to Washington.<\/p>\n
Bush\u2019s location remained secret throughout the day. However, the White House did not suggest that the president was somewhere he was not \u2014 unlike when Trump was whisked out of Turkey.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can imagine the different ways that this could have gone wrong, where, for a period of time, no one would have been able to independently corroborate the status of the U.S. president, or who was in charge of the U.S. government,\u201d Graff said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s an incredibly dangerous moment for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Trump #blames #military #Air #Force #subterfuge #claims #wasnt #scared<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0said Tu… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1464,1649,4212,1863,273,1650,452,4215,4213,357,4214],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-air","tag-air-force-one","tag-blames","tag-claims","tag-donald-trump","tag-force","tag-military","tag-scared","tag-subterfuge","tag-trump","tag-wasnt"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n