White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich shared Tuesday that she met with Trump White House officials after the decoy Air Force One flight to protect the president raised concerns over press safety.
The reports, first confirmed by the Washington Post on Monday, found that the president boarded Air Force One to leave the Turkey-held NATO Summit in July before covertly leaving in a catering truck to board another plane. Members of the press and some of the president’s own staff were unwittingly left behind on the old Air Force One amid an assassination threat from Iran.
“I emphasized that WHCA recognizes the paramount responsibility of the Secret Service to protect the president and that genuine security threats can require extraordinary measures, including circumstances in which operational security limits what can be shared with reporters in real time,” Heinrich, a journalist for Fox News, said in a Tuesday memo to WHCA members. “At the same time, I advocated strongly for the importance of maintaining independent press coverage of the president and an accurate historical record of his movements.”
Heinrich’s memo, shared by CNN journalist Brian Stelter, noted that she held a “candid and productive meeting with senior administration officials” on Tuesday afternoon, discussing the July incident. This conversation addressed concerns stemming from the Washington Post reporting, including “press safety, the ability of the pool to maintain an independent record of the president’s movements and the integrity and credibility of pooled reporting.”
“More broadly, I stressed that undermining confidence in the reliability of pool reports carries risks beyond any single incident,” Heinrich added. “In an already conspiratorial information environment, uncertainty about whether independent reporting can be trusted can be exploited by bad actors seeking to sow confusion and undermine confidence in journalism.”
You can view the full statement via Stelter below.
Heinrich went on to say she asked the White House to develop a protocol for future incidents, aiming to avoid threats to both press safety and credibility. The statement drew criticism online as people pointed to journalists being used as a “decoy target” in the plane switch operation.
“We went thru two big wars traveling into hot zones with VIPs knowing how to communicate threat risks and safety to each other,” said Kevin Baron on X. “War correspondents on the ground got better OPSEC.”
