White House officials melted down online after President Donald Trump was accused of using journalists as “bait” to escape a possible Iranian assassination threat.
Trump, 80, was seen boarding Air Force One in Turkey in front of reporters on July 8, the night after renewed U.S. military strikes on Iran prompted credible intelligence warnings of a threat to his life.
But a Washington Post investigation revealed that as part of an urgent security measure, Trump was secretly shuttled to a decoy plane, an Air Force C-32A, via an airport catering truck. The operation was so tightly guarded that some White House staffers and reporters believed Trump was flying with them out of Turkey toward the United Kingdom.
The critique is that the operation potentially endangered the journalists and staff left behind on the aircraft everyone believed he was aboard.
The revelation sparked a flashpoint between the White House and S.V. Dáte, White House correspondent at HuffPost, who wrote that journalists were made to be “bait for a possible attack,” and that the president “ran and hid.”
The official Trump administration account, Rapid Response 47, fired back with a personal jab. “No, just you, Shirish — a truly generational idiot,” it wrote. Dáte responded, “Oh, look the children are still up. Don’t you have homework to finish?” suggesting interns run the account.
Dáte didn’t back down, sparring with other commentators on the platform. Conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson wrote, “If you are a reporter and only today realize you are expendable to the US Secret Service, you might need to find a new job.”
Dáte shot back, “You are totally getting this wrong. We sign up to take risks associated with covering the president. Not to be bait for a possible attack.” Erickson retorted, “It wasn’t bait. It was the nature of a serious situation. The Secret Service protects the President, not the press.”
When another commentator argued Trump simply wasn’t on the plane this time, Dáte exploded. “Is everyone on this website a complete idiot?? The point of the press pool is to be WITH the president. If the president runs and hides on a different plane, that’s not being with him, is it.”
Writing for HuffPost, Dáte laid out alternatives he says Trump could have used instead. “The plane could have flown with an escort of F-35 fighters, which are often equipped with sophisticated anti-missile electronic warfare technology, aviation experts said,” he wrote, adding it “could have been accompanied by large tankers or cargo planes, creating multiple radar echoes and heat sources to make targeting Air Force One more difficult.”
He said the simplest option “might have been for Trump to slip away aboard the smaller jet, then publicly announce that fact after he was safely over the Mediterranean Sea or western Europe.” He called the operation “a massive breach of trust.”
CNN’s chief political analyst David Axelrod, who flew on Air Force One as a strategist for President Barack Obama, told Kaitlan Collins on The Source he was stunned by what happened. “It was kind of stunning to think that all those on the plane were essentially a decoy,” Axelrod said.
“They were not told that the president was not on board, and the deception continued even after he had safely returned to Washington. That’s hard for me to understand.” He called the secrecy “very unusual” and said it was “a little disturbing” that “the American people deserve to know” how serious the threat actually was.
Former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr raised a pointed question of her own on X. “Crucial: if the threat was so serious President could not be on AF1 WHY did AF conduct the mission?” she wrote. “Iran thought he was on the flight. Wasn’t everyone else on board still at risk?”
Even Trump ally Scott Jennings, also appearing on The Source, called the situation “highly unusual,” though he said it sounded like a “very, very serious threat.”
Asked by a reporter whether he was aware of the credible threat from Iran, Trump replied, “I’m number one on their list, before you. But if I go, you go, right? So perhaps someday you wanna change professions.”
