Trump Left Air Force One

According to reports, while departing the NATO Summit in Turkey, Israeli and United States intelligence believed Trump was the target of an Iranian assassination plot. ChatGPT summarized it nicely, describing an “elaborate security ruse where President Donald Trump was secretly smuggled off Air Force One using a catering truck in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026, following a NATO summit. Prompted by credible U.S. intelligence regarding an Iranian surface-to-air missile threat, the Secret Service and military used the official presidential aircraft as a decoy. This left the traveling press and some staff unaware while Trump flew separately on a military C-32A.”

This obviously irritated and alarmed the press. Their families too. This was warranted. They felt this move unwittingly endangered the press and White House staff remaining on Air Force One. Basically according to reports, they felt they were decoys left as unwitting targets.

There is much to discuss regarding this bait and switch, but for today I want to share my personal experience with the Secret Service and how this incident and the resultant complaining again show how insufferable some in the press have become. It is always about them.

Many trips around the sun ago, I was in my twenties and doing volunteer advance work for then Vice President Quayle when he visited Utah. I will never forget what the lead Secret Service agent told all of us before Vice President Quayle’s arrival. As we stood in a line, he pointedly said that if an incident occurred (I am paraphrasing), our safety was not his or the other agents’ concern. Their only concern was protecting the Vice President.

I remember my colleagues and me being taken aback. They did not tell us this when they asked for volunteers. We just looked at each other and laughed. He was serious. After a momentary pause, we knew this was no joke. We shrugged and went about our assigned tasks.

This personal story in no way compares to the press pool on Air Force One on July 8, but I do not believe only the Secret Service let my fellow volunteers and me that day in on some unmentioned secret about protecting the President and Vice President.

Regarding the Turkey incident, the Washington Post reported:

Although each journalist acknowledged that any member of the press traveling with the president accepts some risk, they also thought they deserved more information about the potential perils of this particular flight.

“We never were provided any opportunity to consent to being used like this,” one journalist said. “We aren’t Air Force or Secret Service — we didn’t sign up for this job to put ourselves on the line to protect the president.”

I do not have all the facts. Based on my limited knowledge from news reports, if I were in charge I might have handled it differently. However, referencing the quote above, the traveling press accepts some risk. Actually it is more than “some risk” as my personal experience shows, you accept a lot of risk. Their job is to protect one person, one person only. The press should know this fact.

To sum it up, as Charles C. W. Cooke said on the National Review podcast “The Editors” this week:

“So Charlie, there’s this journalistic convention that Republicans and conservatives like to make fun of, which is the Republicans pounce phenomena. Republicans pounce, Republicans seize.

It’s functionally an effort by the press to avoid talking about the story. Instead, they talk about the reaction to the story, which isn’t really the story, but it’s a place of comfort. There have been so many strange reactions to this plane story that were talked about the reporters who are more angry about their own fates than Trump’s, why Trump took his staffers like Walt Nutter and Natalie Harp with him instead of Marco Rubio.

I don’t know if it’s all legitimate or not, but they’re looking past the headline, which is Iran is trying to kill the American president and got close enough to an operational plot that it freaked everyone out. Why isn’t everybody reacting to the story here and instead focusing on the reaction to the story?

Well, I’d amend your rubric slightly now. I think it is true very often that instead of talking about the story, the press likes to talk about the reaction to the story. But I think just as often, the press likes to talk about itself.

“And if there is a choice to be made between talking about the story, the reaction to the story, or themselves, most journalists pick themselves. Now, I’m not, of course, suggesting that it wouldn’t be rather alarming if having got back on Air Force One, I learned that the president had been taken off it for security reasons. But once again, the scale and tone of the whining is annoying.

And it shows us the immense self-regard that the press corps has, and can’t get past, and can’t be dissuaded from under any circumstances. This is not the story. This is a part of the story.

It’s the obvious and inevitable personal reaction of anyone who was involved themselves. But the purpose of a journalist is to exempt themselves. Which is why, if you look at the great war reporters, and I’m talking here not about those who are on the outskirts of a war, as here, but who were on the front lines, who landed on the beaches, if you will.

“You read those great stories, they do not say every second line, and of course I was in great danger, and of course the bullets whizzed by me, and of course the explosions were close to me, and of course I was scared, and of course I was hungry, and of course I was tired. Because the purpose of the job is to discuss questions of national importance and the subjects that the journalists were sent to cover. And they just can’t do it.”

“So it’s not that I begrudge personal feelings, or even a mention of those feelings, but as you say, what is it that CNN has talked about now for three days solid? The press, the press, the press, the press, the press. And I think this is because, and I grant that this is a bold claim, I think this is because ultimately the press believes that it is the most important institution in the United States.”

“We already know that journalists think that they are specifically protected by the Constitution. Not that the things that they do are, those things, of course, can be done by anyone, but that they are. I think they think they are not even an equal branch of government.”

“I think they think they are the branch of government. And we’re seeing it once again. It’s bad training, it’s bad for the country.”

“There’s nothing I can add to my existing condemnation of the journalistic class. But we’re once again seeing why its approval ratings are somewhere below syphilis.”

That sums it up pretty well. Thank goodness everyone was safe.