CNN commentator David Axelrod said an Air Force One hoax to safeguard President Donald Trump was “disturbing” in part because it endangered unaware reporters and White House staff who essentially became decoys. (Watch the video below.)
Reports emerged Monday that Trump did not fly out of Turkey on an Air Force One jet last month as it appeared, but was secretly transported to another Air Force jet via a catering container truck on the tarmac.
That left journalists aboard the real Air Force One as potential sitting ducks amid a high alert of an Iranian assassination threat.
“Yeah, I think things can be embargoed,” Axelrod, a former adviser for ex-President Barack Obama, said. “Reporters understood that there were reasons why there were elements of that trip that needed to be kept under wraps until after the president was safely in and out of those places. But the thing here that’s a little disturbing is that … if they needed to take such extraordinary steps to protect the president because the threat level was so high, the American people deserve to know that the threat level was that high in this particular case that he had to take such an extraordinary measure.”
Axelrod pivoted to the danger for those actually on the Air Force One flight that did take off for Britain ― without Trump aboard.
“And then the other piece of it is that, in fact, everyone on that plane was a decoy,” he continued. “If they felt that it was unsafe to be on the plane, then it was unsafe for everybody else to be on the plane as well. So, they at least deserve to know, if not then, then after, why this was happening.”
CNN host Kaitlan Collins replied, “Yeah, because obviously if the plane was the target, because the president was on board and the idea was still that the president was on board, which was what everyone thought, it would still have been a target.”