President Donald Trump left his cabinet secretaries and top advisers on a plane threatened by Iran while he moved to safety, The New York Times reported.
Air Force One was targeted by Iran as he left a NATO summit in Turkey, but reports are surfacing that Trump switched planes by hiding in a catering cart. However, the latest reporting by The Times reveals Trump also ditched Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and traveling press, who were "kept in the dark."
Two anonymous officials told Times reporter Maggie Haberman that Stephen Miller, Trump's top domestic policy adviser, and Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, were also left on the threatened decoy plane. Trump meanwhile left Ankara, Turkey, aboard a C-32A military jet.
According to Haberman's reporting, Rubio knew about the threat from Iran and that he was traveling on a plane that had been targeted for an attack. However, it's unclear if other top White House officials knew about the threat too.
The anonymous officials who spoke with Haberman said that at least some of the White House staff who also left on the endangered plane were unaware of the threat.
A White House spokesman didn't respond to a request from The Times for comment about the discussion to decide who would be left on the threatened plane and who would be whisked to safety with Trump.
The New York Times's reporting did, however, include a comment from Andrew Marlowe, the Hollywood screenwriter of the 1997 Harrison Ford thriller "Air Force One."
Marlowe told The Times that even though the Secret Service was trying to keep Trump safe, the optics of the reporting that has been coming out don't make him look good.
"Now real life isn't a movie, but given the circumstances, I'm not sure I could ever script a moment like that for a heroic main character," Marlowe said. "If the threat were that great, it's hard to imagine the audience rooting for any character who would trade his own safety by treating the remaining civilians onboard as potential sacrificial lambs, especially without their informed consent."