President Donald Trump has confirmed he secretly switched planes when leaving the NATO summit in Turkey last month in an effort to evade a possible Iranian threat.
“It's only up to the Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump told reporters late Tuesday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it, I do what they say."
When asked about the nature of the “threat,” Trump acknowledged there had been one but said he “didn’t really ask too much about it,” adding that he receives “a lot of threats.”
The Washington Post first reported Monday that when Trump left Ankara, Turkey, on July 8 and headed to England, he boarded Air Force One in front of the media, before being transferred to a military aircraft via a catering truck in an effort to conceal his exact whereabouts. Several other outlets also carried the story citing unnamed U.S. officials as sources.
Video footage of the scene shows a Turkish airport catering truck, understood to be sheltering Trump inside, pulling away from Air Force One.
Journalists, alongside some White House staffers, traveled on Air Force One and were reportedly unaware of the President no longer being onboard.
The operation has come under scrutiny, sparking questions as to whether those left on the decoy plane presumed to still be carrying the President were at risk.
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