Iranian officials and state media mocked President Donald Trump this week for switching planes during his trip to Turkey last month because the Secret Service was concerned about an assassination threat from Iran.
The plane swap, which occurred on July 8, was first reported on Monday by the Washington Post. According to the report, Trump flew to Turkey for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aboard the new Air Force One, a Boeing 747-8 plane that was given to the United States by Qatar.
Trump announced he would take the “old” Air Force One home, and boarded the plane on camera, but was then secretly transferred to an Air Force C-32A transport plane in a catering truck.
The traveling press corps, unaware that Trump had moved to a different aircraft, flew back to the United States aboard Air Force One. Some of them became very upset that they had been left to travel aboard a “decoy” plane that might have been attacked by terrorists, turning the Washington Post story into a week-long media scandal.
“Well, it’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military. 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,” Trump said on Tuesday when asked about the story.
The press was not mollified by security experts pointing out that Trump’s plane switch was not really unprecedented, and a long line of presidents before him — Democrats and Republicans alike — have occasionally been obliged to take similar measures for safety while traveling abroad.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the real scandal in the story of the “brilliant” Turkey plane swap was that someone leaked the details of Trump’s security measures to the media, increasing the danger to Trump, future presidents, and the traveling press corps.
“I hope that they prosecute this to the fullest. Whoever leaked that, in my opinion, and having been involved in this, was highly placed in that process. There’s only a few people who actually know exactly what’s going down, and that’s by design — so if somebody leaked it, it was somebody involved in the process, and that scares the hell out of me,” said Patterson, who traveled with former President Bill Clinton.
The BBC reported on Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung remained on board Air Force One with the media after Trump changed planes. Rubio and Bessent were aware of Trump’s plane switch at the time.
Iranian state news organizations and social media accounts spent the week mocking Trump and accusing him of cowardice. A news reader on Iranian state TV on Friday claimed the plane switch story was a “humiliation” for Trump.
“Again, Trump, with his new scandal, has become the top subject in the U.S. media these days. A scandal stemming from fear of Iran’s military power, a power that caused Trump, last month, while returning from Turkey, to secretly switch his plane,” the presenter said.
The Iranian embassy in South Africa sneered in social media posts that Trump “will be hidden in a trash can before long,” and mocked him for “fleeing in a food truck.”
“Iranian hardliners, who have been talking about taking revenge for the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader on February 28, as well as some other senior political and military officials in Iran are basking in the fact that the United States was so afraid and concerned about President Trump’s safety and security,” Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group told Reuters on Friday.