President Donald Trump has been busted gaslighting White House reporters just after he allowed them to board a flight as decoys while he quietly escaped a credible Iranian threat.
A bombshell report from The Washington Post revealed that Trump was secretly transported from the old Air Force One jet to a smaller third plane via an airport catering truck to protect himself from an Iranian assassination plot while he was in Turkey last month.
White House reporters aboard the old Air Force One were kept in the dark—unaware that they were passengers on a “decoy” flight that put their lives at risk.
Trump, 80, clearly did not expect his plane swap would be exposed—at least, not in the immediate aftermath of the switcheroo.
Speaking to reporters at a British military base shortly after boarding his new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One again, as if nothing had happened, he brazenly portrayed himself as being in the same boat as the White House press pool.
“Were you aware of any credible threat by Iran against Air Force One?” one reporter asked.
“I have a threat all the time. I’m number one on their list, before you,” Trump replied. “But if I go, you go.”
“So perhaps, perhaps someday you’ll want to change professions,” he added.
The journalists were already confused about why they had flown on the older Air Force One, since Trump had flown on his new Qatari-gifted Air Force One on the way to Turkey.
Asked whether there had been a security concern, Trump insisted, “No, no, no. Why would they?”
Another reporter asked why the journalists had been told to close their window shades while flying out of Turkey.
“No,” the president said first, before adding, “Well, yeah, because you’re, you know, probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.”
He continued his gaslighting, saying, “They didn’t ask me to close mine, but if they did, I would’ve done it.”
“So I could see something like that. I didn’t, I didn’t know they did that, but I could see something.”
The White House’s decision to keep the journalists in the dark about the danger they faced as passengers of a decoy to throw off an Iranian assassination attempt has sparked outrage.
“When you sign up to work at the White House, even as a civilian, part of your job is to defend the president,” one White House reporter told the Post. “That’s not my job. I cover the president. Reporters take risks as part of the job, but not on behalf of the president.”
“That the White House would lie to the press corps in its entirety about where the president is,” journalist and historian Garrett Graff told the Post, “That’s a new Rubicon that’s being crossed.”
Graff added that the fact that it was a credible threat that forced the White House to secure Trump “makes it all the more egregious that the press was kept out of the loop.”
