It’s gotten to the point with our ‘mainstream media’ that protecting any president named Donald Trump is a) optional; and b) strictly up to them – not the Secret Service. Operational security, when it comes to that Trump guy, should be publicly debated and decided by the press corps or something.
‘The media’ spent Tuesday generating breathless outrage about being deceived by President Trump after he was secretly moved to a different plane on credible intelligence that an Iranian plot against his life was in play. Tuesday night, Trump explained the entire situation in about 90 seconds and destroyed the narrative completely.
Standing on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, the president was asked about reports that he had secretly boarded a smaller military aircraft when departing Turkey on July 8 — leaving the press pool and some White House staffers to fly on Air Force One while he slipped away under cover of a catering truck amid the credible Iranian assassination threat.
His answer was simple and devastating:
“I go by Secret Service. I go by the military. They said, ‘Sir, we’d like you to do this.’ I said, ‘Whatever you want.'”
Then came the question that the media’s narrative depends on nobody asking clearly:
Reporter: “Why was it too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One, but not too dangerous for the press?”
Trump: “I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane, I think, that they would be more likely to go for.”
Full stop. The “decoy” plane — Air Force One, the most heavily modified military aircraft in the American fleet, packed with classified security systems and communications equipment specifically designed to keep the president alive and functioning during a national emergency — was the safer option for everyone aboard it. The journalists traveling on Air Force One were not, as the breathless coverage implied, placed in jeopardy. They were on the most secure aircraft in the world. Trump was on a smaller plane that the Secret Service considered a less obvious target.
The media spent Tuesday on the proverbial fainting couch, despairing that members of the press pool had traveled without knowing the full security picture. An obvious point that apparently needed saying: deranged people like to shoot at Donald Trump. If you want access to him, you accept the risk that comes with that.
What actually happened is the opposite of the story the media was telling. Trump followed Secret Service instructions. He did what his security detail told him to do. He boarded a plane they determined was safer for him to travel on. The journalists on Air Force One were on a heavily fortified military aircraft that Iran would have been far less likely to target precisely because it was supposed to carry the president.
“I don’t worry about anything, to be honest. Whatever it is. You know my attitude? Whatever!” Trump said. That’s the story. A credible Iranian threat. A Secret Service decision. A president who followed his protective detail’s instructions without complaint. And a press corps that turned routine presidential security operations into a scandal because they weren’t briefed on classified threat information in advance.
The narrative is dead. The catering truck worked. Welcome to Tuesday.
