President Donald Trump drew accusations of a "deeply chilling" nuclear blunder from national security historian Garrett Graff over the secret plane-switch out of Turkey last month.
On July 8, Trump publicly boarded the old Air Force One in Ankara, then slipped out the far side via a catering truck to a smaller C-32A military jet, according to CBS News.
The press and some White House staff were left on the decoy, CBS News reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew with Trump on that same unprotected C-32A — putting two of the nation's top nuclear decision-makers on one plane while Iran was actively hunting the president, CBS News reported.
Graff literally wrote the book on nuclear succession — his Raven Rock covers U.S. continuity-of-government planning.
"It's easy in this nesting doll of lies and corruption to glide past the final circle of lies and corruption that this episode highlights," Graff wrote in his Doomsday Scenario newsletter.
That final circle, Graff argued, is a nuclear risk hiding beneath the plane-ruse scandal.
The measures taken that day were "security precautions that no previous president has ever taken," Graff wrote, including the deployment of "a presidential 747, with staff, senior Cabinet officials, and an unknowing and unwitting press corps aboard, as a decoy plane and potential target for an Iranian assassination attempt."
"That's a deeply chilling scenario — and in hindsight casts in a new light the comments that Trump made just one day after departing Turkey about how he has left a standing order that if he's killed Iran is to be obliterated by US nuclear missiles," Graff added.
Trump posted on Truth Social that 1,000 "missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran…" to be fired automatically if Iran killed him.
The United States has no mechanism for an automatic, preauthorized strike — if Trump were killed, power would pass instantly to Vice President JD Vance, who alone would decide whether to retaliate, the Associated Press reported.
"There's a lot of reason to doubt the legality of such standing orders, since in the event of a president's death, the nuclear launch authority would immediately pass to the vice president or designated successor — and ultimately it would be up to him or her to determine whether to proceed," Graff told the Associated Press.
"It also casts in a different light the decision of Trump to exit Turkey on the same plane as the defense secretary — thereby placing two of the nation's top nuclear-decision makers simultaneously in danger," Graff wrote in his newsletter.
"This isn't a laughable operation to sneak away from the press in a catering truck — this was a high-stakes presidential gamble with global stability and nuclear war hanging in the balance that indicates, anew, how much Trump's ego and corruption undermines our security at home and abroad," Graff concluded.
