US President Donald Trump said that he slipped away from Air Force One after a trip last month in Turkey because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a “different plane” because of a threat that he insisted did not scare him.
Mr 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.
He also downplayed the risk to the people — White House officials, security and support staff, and reporters — he left on the plane.
“They wanted me to go on a different flight, different plane,” Mr Trump told reporters after returning from an event in Ohio, saying he had little choice in the matter.
“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it,” he said.
“I get a lot of threats.”
His comments confirmed a report that first appeared in The Washington Post saying that Mr Trump, following a Nato summit last month, was spirited onto a different plane because of a credible threat from Iran.
The action was kept secret for weeks, until the newspaper’s story.
“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Mr Trump said Tuesday, who did not provide many details about the action.
But he said the incident did not scare him.
“I don’t worry about anything, to be honest,” Mr Trump said.
“Whatever it is. You know my attitude? Whatever!”
Commanders in chief have sometimes kept overseas trips covert for security reasons, with schedules and logistics kept classified until after for safety reasons.
But the fact that Mr Trump’s whereabouts were concealed at the time and for weeks afterwards is believed to be unprecedented.
“We have absolutely seen the president fly on unmarked or decoy planes before, into Iraq, Afghanistan, other war-zone-like places,” Garrett M Graff, author of Raven Rock: The Story Of The US Government’s Secret Plan To Save Itself — While The Rest Of Us Die, said.
“But this was an ongoing secret that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”
After hiding in the catering vehicle and being moved to the other plane, Mr Trump stopped in Britain, sneaked back aboard the presidential plane undetected, and even later scoffed when asked about potential danger.
“If I go, you go. Right?” he told reporters then — gliding past the fact that if the plane had been shot down, the president would not have been aboard.
The president’s flight out of Turkey made headlines at the time because he had arrived aboard a luxury jet gifted by Qatar, which was not equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems found on older presidential jets.
Mr Trump ended up travelling in a smaller government aircraft from Turkey to the UK, only to secretly reboard the decoy jet, then descend from it and climb back aboard the Qatari plane.
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 are not announced until the president is deemed to be out of harm’s way.
What is different this time is that Mr Trump was covertly separated from the rest of his travellers — including the press pool meant to provide independent coverage of the president and his actions — and, instead of informing the public about what occurred once the risk had passed, the White House still has not fully revealed what took place.
Mr Graff said the presence of the White House press corps is as much about protecting “the presidency and democracy” as it is about covering the story.
“This shows that the White House just fundamentally doesn’t understand how important that role is,” he said.
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