President Donald Trump might have a particular motivation for blowing a gasket about recent leaks like his catering cart escape to a secret plane.
National security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler raised her new theory in a post about the incident, which involved reporters and even some White House staff traveling in a decoy Air Force One flight without their knowledge during the threat of an assassination attempt — and it comes back to the fact that the only other significant people on the real flight were Trump aides Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta, and Dan Scavino.
"The details about who was in that catering cart are useful," she said, and not just because of the fact that "Trump took his comfort blonde, Harp, with him but not Stephen Miller (or any other Cabinet official, to include Marco Rubio)," wrote Wheeler. Rather, it could actually explain why Trump is so angry and scared about the leaks coming out of the White House.
At the same time that The New York Times was hit with subpoenas for its journalistic sources about the Air Force One security issues, Wheeler explained.
"Susie Wiles and Kash Patel started seizing phones almost immediately. They also had to learn who was traveling with Trump — who was in that catering cart," Wheeler wrote.
The simple fact is, said Wheeler, the nature of this leak means only a small handful of people could have tipped off the press — and most of those options aren't good for Trump. Those options include "One of those closest aides in the catering cart, or the junior people they brought with them; A very small group of the big-ego people left back as bait on Old Air Force One; Someone inside the Secret Service, involved in the ruse; [or] Turkish sources, who learned of the transfer."
This means that for all Trump knows, one of his most trusted aides, like Harp, could have betrayed him. And it's vital to him to know whether that happened, Wheeler wrote.
"None of that justifies the abusive way Kash and Susie Wiles started chasing down sources," she concluded. "But it does explain it."