President Trump said on Tuesday evening that the Secret Service and the military decided he would take a secret flight out of Turkey last month while his staffers and the traveling press flew on a decoy Air Force One.
“It’s only up to Secret Service,” Mr. Trump told reporters after landing in Washington following his trip to Ohio, in his first public comments about the evacuation from Turkey. “I just follow what they like to do. So I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane, equal safety but they wanted me to do it. So I do it.”
Mr. Trump’s effort to redirect questions to his protective detail and military advisers came as his administration faced increasing scrutiny over the revelation that Mr. Trump was secretly evacuated out of Turkey on a military jet after the NATO summit last month amid threats against him from Iran.
Despite Mr. Trump and other officials saying publicly last month that he would leave Turkey on one of the older versions of Air Force One rather than a luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on, his officials had decided instead to sneak him into a military jet via a catering container.
The original plane, however, still carried White House staffers and top officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, and Steven Cheung, the White House communications director.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday night framed the decision as one that was out of his control. “I get a lot of threats,” Mr. Trump said when asked why the Secret Service moved him to a different plane.
“I just have to do what they say,” he added. “They go for safety and I have to do what they say.”
The Secret Service usually works with intelligence officials, the State Department and the military when planning on how to respond to threats against the president overseas, according to former homeland security officials.
Agents in the Secret Service have generally lived by the ethos of bringing the president where he wants to go, even if it means putting their bodies on the line. And Mr. Trump has in the past shown that he has a strong say in the decision-making process over risky movements.
In 2020, while being treated for Covid-19, a masked Mr. Trump took a break from the hospital to drive by well-wishers inside a hermetically sealed, armored Chevy Suburban with at least two Secret Service agents. He also continued to campaign while the pandemic spread, causing some Secret Service agents to privately question whether additional precautions would be put in place to protect the detail.
When asked on Tuesday evening why it was too dangerous for Mr. Trump to fly on Air Force One from Turkey but not too dangerous to evacuate the press, Mr. Trump claimed without providing evidence that the secret plane was actually at “greater risk.”
The plane that the public did not know he was on, rather than the plane carrying his staffers and Air Force One insignia, was the plane they were “more likely to go for,” he said.
