'Elaborate FABRICATION': Nicolle CATCHES Trump LYING after using press as DECOYS to evade threat

[0:00] In covering a presidency that is every single day summed up by its unprecedented and unparalleled [0:07] combination of callousness, incompetence and surrealness, Donald Trump and his administration [0:13] have managed to outdo themselves today, likely endangering national security, his own staff [0:19] and the journalists whose job it is to cover all of them in the process. [0:24] Alarming new reporting finds that Donald Trump used his own staff and White House journalists [0:29] as decoys amid security threats from Iran, having them fly out of Turkey on the old Air Force One [0:35] while Donald Trump flew out on a separate unmarked aircraft. [0:39] Donald Trump pulled this off by being smuggled in a catering truck. [0:43] If you can just let your brain try to picture that to his separate unmarked aircraft. [0:49] Washington Post, who broke this news, reports this, quote, [0:52] Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of the television cameras. [0:56] He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane, an Air Force C-32A, via an airport [1:03] catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies pre-flight, according to [1:09] a U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by the Post. [1:14] That made Air Force One a decoy with media and some White House staff aboard. [1:19] The maneuver meant that Trump's actual location was concealed from the American public and many [1:24] senior U.S. officials for hours. Weeks later, it remains unclear how widely the administration [1:30] has disclosed the operation. The Washington Post found pool footage showing Donald Trump [1:35] boarding Air Force One. The catering truck then pulls up to the plane and moves over to what we [1:41] now know was the plane Trump ended up departing Turkey on board. Both planes then landed in the UK [1:48] and Trump was then secretly moved back onto the old Air Force One to keep up the ruse. [1:54] He then disembarked in full view of reporters and boarded his Qatari-donated Air Force One, [2:01] the big fancy one, to return to Washington. At the time, it was reported that Trump would be [2:06] leaving Turkey on the old Air Force One rather than the Qatari Air Force One due to security threats [2:12] from Iran. What is new here is that we're now learning for the first time that Trump flew on [2:16] neither aircraft. In fact, he departed on the third plane. Trump vehemently denied the reporting [2:22] about the reasons behind the first switch that we knew about at the time when pressed by reporters [2:28] on the ride back to Washington. Reporters who were unaware they had just been used as decoys by the [2:34] President of the United States. Watch that with this new information in mind. [2:38] I go, you go. When he said it, he knew it wasn't true, right? He'd just been shuttled off the plane [3:43] that the press he's talking to right there were on. So when he says, quote, if you go, if I go, you go, [3:50] he knows he's lying. An elaborate, elaborate fabrication. A lot of unnecessary steps there [3:57] are taken to sustain the lie. In a statement to the New York Times, the White House said, quote, [4:03] they use every tool at our disposal, including distraction and misdirection to address threats [4:08] against the president. Donald Trump engaging in an extraordinary act of deception is the latest [4:14] proof that he's lost complete control of the war with Iran is where we begin today. The New York [4:19] Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. She's the author of the bombshell bestseller regime [4:24] change. She confirmed the operation for The Times after The Washington Post first broke this story. [4:30] She also is one of the journalists who first reported about the security threat. And one of [4:37] the reasons we know about it. Also joining us, Ned Price is here. He served as an official in both the [4:41] State Department and the CIA. And with me for the hour, former assistant special agent in charge at [4:47] the FBI, national security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg's here. Maggie, just untangle [4:53] this web of perhaps a legitimate security threat. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. [5:01] And then a rather unparalleled deception involving White House staff and press. And oh, by the way, [5:10] subpoenas for five New York Times journalists in the middle of all this. Just unwind and unpack all [5:15] that for us. [5:16] Let me put it that way. Well, thank you for having me. And if my colleagues and I confirmed what was [5:22] pretty astonishing reporting from The Washington Post, we would tip our hat for them. But yes, [5:27] you know, what looked like one thing at the time, a president taking an older Air Force One, [5:35] you know, for old time's sake, in his words, the press only knew about this, the public only knew [5:40] about that, because he announced that he was doing it. And then they got questions. And then the White [5:45] House communications director gave that statement about doing everything they can to protect the [5:49] president, including misdirection and, or distractions and misdirections, which was a [5:55] little strange. Then it turned out that, you know, within 24 hours of the New York Times is reporting [6:01] about the fact that there had been a concern by government officials about the president taking [6:06] the Qatari gifted jet, which does not have the same defensive capabilities as the older Air Force [6:11] One models. The reporters on the story, my colleagues, faced subpoenas, not subpoenas that were [6:16] delivered through counsel, but FBI showing up at people's homes, which is not normally how this is [6:21] done. And subpoenas are not supposed to be the very first stop on the road in leak investigations. [6:27] Those subpoenas don't exist anymore. But what now turns out is that the president wasn't even on [6:33] that plane. Now, our reporting is that there was a credible threat. We don't know what the threat [6:38] was, Nicole. So, you know, it's hard for me to assess what I don't know. I'm not an Intel official. [6:42] They deemed it credible. And, you know, there is reason to believe that they did. The behavior [6:47] indicates that they did. But what then ends up happening is, and they are always going to put [6:53] the president's safety first. What ends up happening is the press and some of his own staff [6:57] end up on the older Air Force One, which does have defensive capabilities, which certainly would be [7:02] safer than the Qatari jet in that moment. The president could have, in that clip that you showed, [7:07] where he was briefing reporters on the Qatari jet that they got aboard and was flying from the UK [7:13] base, which was deemed safer than the Ankara airport in Turkey, flying back to the US to [7:18] Joint Base Andrews. He could have said, we had a concern. We had a threat. I was on a separate [7:24] plane. He could have told reporters off the record. The White House could have told reporters off the [7:28] record. None of that happened. Instead, there is this gamesmanship where he's sort of taunting and [7:34] saying, you know, if I go, you go. And that was not the case in that moment. Again, I want to stress, [7:41] I understand that the federal government is rightly going to be more worried about the president than [7:46] it is anybody else. But there are trade-offs, and that was one of them. Maggie, I mean, do you now [7:52] think that the subpoenas were to find out if you guys knew where he really was, or if they were to [8:01] ascertain, I mean, does it make you wonder what the subpoenas were for in the first place? [8:08] It's a good question. And I can't say that I fully understand it. You know, the Times was not the only [8:13] outlet that reported some of this material at the time. Maybe there were subpoenas to other news [8:18] outlets, and we weren't aware of them. I don't know. But it mostly seemed to be, from my understanding, [8:24] and again, maybe there is more here. Clearly, there's always a lot more that we don't know [8:29] when it comes to this particular government. But they are very good at creating these displays [8:34] of openness. Jonathan and I wrote about this in Regime Change. And in fact, it's just a show. [8:39] It's a spectacle. They're very good at keeping secrets when they want to. And this was one they [8:43] tried to. But I don't know if the secret they were attempting to keep was this, or if they were just [8:48] generally trying to intimidate from further reporting in general. We know that this president [8:53] likes secrecy and does not like information getting out of his government unless he sanctions it. [8:57] So it could be, you know, answer D, all of the above. I don't know. [9:02] And Maggie, I was on the other side of the relationship. But I can't imagine a situation [9:12] where you do not level up with the White House pool and the White House press corps that travels [9:18] with you. Obviously, on September 11, it was an extraordinary event. And not all the press went on [9:24] with President Bush. He ended up in Nebraska. But they were not used as a decoy, one. And they were [9:32] made aware of what was happening and why. So both the security threat that the towers had been hit, [9:39] the Pentagon had been hit, and there was an obvious threat to the president, and the fact that we weren't [9:45] going to send them up in a plane so that whoever was attacking the country that day thought the [9:50] president of the United States was on it when he wasn't. I cannot fathom that practice. And I wonder [9:56] if it makes you rethink or your colleagues rethink the relationship with this White House. [10:02] I think we're pretty clear that this White House doesn't like the press. And beyond that, [10:07] does not really think much of the public's right to know and doesn't see the press as anything more than [10:13] a means to an end for what President Trump personally wants. And I don't think that that [10:17] is new here. I think that that has been pretty consistent the whole time for this presidency. [10:22] I think in the first term, I think you did have people who at least recognized some role of what [10:28] government is supposed to do. And they do at times have that. I don't want to, you know, [10:32] suggest that this relates to every single thing. Not everything is completely binary. But in this [10:38] instance, you know, and there have been others, to your point, it's not unheard of that there would [10:45] be some kind of Sutterfuge involved to try to keep a president safe. But presidents, to your point, [10:50] President Bush traveled with reporters, albeit a slimmed down press pull after 9-11. Presidents have [10:56] taken reporters with them, including this president in his first term, into war zones. Reporters end up [11:02] making an agreement beyond the understanding of good faith with White Houses that we will keep this [11:08] off the record until we land or until we are in a specific spot. And then the public is informed. [11:14] What this speaks to is this broader idea of secrecy, which is a huge hallmark of this government [11:21] in a way that personally I have never seen with a federal government or frankly any other. [11:26] I'll be here.