WASHINGTON (TNND) — A new report from The Washington Post revealed President Donald Trump’s meeting with NATO leaders in Ankara last month ended with a carefully choreographed ploy to keep him out of physical danger.
A new report from The Washington Post revealed President Donald Trump’s meeting with NATO leaders in Ankara last month ended with a carefully choreographed ploy to keep him out of physical danger. (TNND)
The newspaper broke news Monday evening that “(a)n Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One,” citing materials reviewed by The Washington Post and two sources familiar with the operation and the president’s travel.
The Iranian regime has made death threats against Trump before, and they’ve intensified during the Iran war. This gambit to protect the president occurred in the immediate aftermath of Trump resuming strikes on Iran after a memorandum of understanding between the countries fell apart.
Before the secret plane switch on July 8, Trump announced in a social media post that he would not depart Ankara using the same aircraft in which he arrived, a Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar. Instead, on the route home that included a stop at Mildenhall air base in England, he would take the “old” Air Force One, “for old time’s sake” and so the Qatar-gifted plane could be toured by U.S. personnel stationed at Mildenhall.
To many who regularly cover Trump, something seemed off. There were suspicions that Iranian threats were behind the last-minute change to the president’s travel plans. During a press conference closing out his time at the NATO summit, Trump fielded multiple questions about this and did not give direct answers, but did say, “I’m number one on the kill list for Iran.”
According to The Washington Post, shortly after Trump boarded the “old” Air Force One in Ankara, he secretly entered a catering truck on the other side of the aircraft, opposite television cameras and was shuttled to a nearby C-32A aircraft, which is smaller and has fewer security capabilities than the main presidential plane. The C-32A is mainly used by the vice president.
“The number one priority is to use as many diversionary tactics as you possibly can so that we can put the president in that secure environment as we possibly can,” said former Secret Service Special Agent Richard Staropoli.
As reported by The Washington Post, this clandestine operation “made Air Force One a ‘decoy’ with media and some White House staff aboard.”
Since Trump was secretly moved, Staropoli said it’s “100% accurate” to infer the threat posed to the plane remained.
“I don’t think it’s being overly dramatic to say, yeah, people’s lives were put in danger just by being on board that aircraft,” Staropoli said.
According to real-time updates from the White House press pool, a small group of journalists assigned to cover the president and share information with the rest of the press corps, they were instructed to keep their window shades in the press cabin closed.
Staropoli said this was likely a move to prevent passengers from seeing the president’s true location.
“Now that the proverbial cat’s out of the bag, and we know there was a lot of vehicular traffic going on in that runway, I think closing those windows was the appropriate thing to do, because you just don’t want to take the chance of some reporter, you know, live streaming something,” Staropoli said.
After a three-and-a-half-hour flight, the planes landed at Mildenhall. The pool report said, “It was an uneventful flight, with no visitors to the press cabin.”
It’s not clear how Trump was moved from the C-32A back to the old Air Force One in England before boarding the Qatari jet for the remainder of the trip home to Washington.
Neither the White House nor the Secret Service responded to specific questions about how the operation unfolded and when the decision to move the president was made. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told The Washington Post that the Qatari-gifted plane is “state-of-the-art” and “fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff.” He said they use every tool at their disposal to address threats against the president.
Staropoli said he’s concerned about the consequences of the public learning details of how this unfolded.
“(I)t only seeks to diminish the abilities to keep the president safe. This was a bad move on somebody’s part. Leaking that type of information out to the public,” Staropoli said.
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