“It's only up to the Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump told reporters late Tuesday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it, I do what they say."
The Washington Post first reported Monday that when Trump left Ankara, Turkey, on July 8 and headed to England, although he stepped onto Air Force One in front of the media, he was transferred to a military aircraft via a catering truck in an effort to conceal his exact whereabouts. Several other outlets also carried the story citing unnamed U.S. officials as sources.
Journalists, alongside some White House staffers, traveled on Air Force One and were reportedly unaware of the President no longer being onboard.
"I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump told reporters late Tuesday. ”Because that would be the plane, I think, that they would be more likely to go for."
Air Force One sits on the tarmac with an airport catering container adjacent to the body of the aircraft in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026. —Win McNamee—Getty Images
Prior to leaving the summit on July 8, Trump had posted on social media that, for “old time’s sake,” he would fly out of Turkey on the older Air Force One instead of the newer, controversial Qatari-gifted aircraft, which had made its first international trip to the NATO event.
When asked during a NATO press briefing why he wasn’t flying the new plane home, the President told reporters that the aircraft was being flown to a U.S. base to give service members a chance to see it.
Former President Bill Clinton disembarks a jet at Islamabad International Airport in March 2000. —Stephen Jaffe—Getty Images
Trump isn't the only President to execute a decoy mission
Although rare, a decoy maneuver such as this is not unheard of when it comes to presidential travel.
The switch was revealed when a Secret Service agent resembling Clinton stepped out of Air Force One upon touching down in Pakistan, while Clinton disembarked from the second aircraft.
Page this week broke her 26-year silence on the briefing that preceded the secret switch.
On why she chose to share her experience all these years later, Page explained: “I haven’t spoken about this episode before, because of the off-the-record ground rules of that discussion. But since more than a quarter-century has passed—and since the ruse became evident as soon as President Clinton disembarked in Pakistan—I think it’s OK for me to relay it now.”
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