Then and Now: Clinton and Air Force One Security (2000) and Trump and Air Force One Security (2026)

JULIAN ZELIZER:

Hi, I’m Julian Zelizer from The Long View.

JONATHAN ALTER:

And I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.

JULIAN ZELIZER:

One of the quirkier stories in the news recently concerns President Trump’s return trip from Turkey. After authorities received information about a threat to the president, the Secret Service secretly took him off Air Force One. Reporters and some members of the Cabinet were left aboard the plane.

The president was driven away in a catering truck, transferred to another aircraft and flown home. Meanwhile, Air Force One took off with the reporters and Cabinet members still aboard. They were not told about the threat; they were merely instructed to lower their window shades.

This has prompted considerable debate about how the situation was handled—and why the plane took off with its passengers unaware that they might be at risk.

You reminded me that there have been other occasions when presidents were transferred from Air Force One because of security concerns. One involved President Clinton in 2000, during a trip from India to Pakistan. Do I have that right? What happened then, and how does it compare with what we’re reading about now?

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JONATHAN ALTER:

They were worried about terrorism in Pakistan, so they put President Clinton on a different plane. That wasn’t a crazy thing to do for security reasons—and neither was the decision this time. There was a report of somebody with a shoulder-fired missile launcher who could have taken down Air Force One.

But Trump allowed everybody else—including members of his Cabinet, as well as reporters and staff—to fly off on this decoy plane while he climbed into a catering truck, checked out the pretzels and boarded another aircraft.

That’s somewhat similar to what happened in 2000, but the difference is critical: The press pool was told.

Originally, the Secret Service told White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart not to inform the press or the other passengers. Lockhart said, in effect, “We can’t do that.” So the traveling press pool was told that Clinton would be on a different plane because of security threats. Afterward, officials briefed everybody about what had happened.

In this case, they lied. Trump later said that he was the one who had been in danger when, by that point, he wasn’t. Everybody else was. The administration then continued its normal practice of lying about virtually every aspect of the episode.

So it’s the lying, more than the actual sequence of events, that people should focus on.

JULIAN ZELIZER:

That’s something we’ve been talking about since Trump’s first inauguration, when he lied about the size of the crowd: misinformation, disinformation and the way they affect every element of the presidency. That pattern continues through this trip and its aftermath.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks again, Jon. We’ll talk next week.

JONATHAN ALTER:

Okay. Bye-bye.