WASHINGTON, United States (Reuters) — During the closing hours of the NATO Leaders’ Summit in Ankara in July, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he would not be flying home aboard the new presidential plane that had brought him to the Turkish capital after Qatar gifted it to the administration last year.

Instead, Trump said, he had sent the aircraft ahead to Mildenhall Air Force Base in England so service members could tour it. He wrote, without making clear how he would ultimately get home to Washington, that he would fly to Mildenhall aboard an older Air Force One.

As part of the press pool traveling with Trump, I was along for the ride.

The itinerary change was confusing, and Trump’s explanation seemed implausible. Reporters’ questions to one another turned to whether Iran had hatched a concrete plot to assassinate the president. At first, our precise itinerary also remained a mystery, though we assumed we were still heading back to Washington as initially planned after the stop in the United Kingdom.

If our initial hunch regarding a security concern proved accurate, the Qatari-provided plane – which is known to lack certain safety features – might not be up to snuff. That could explain why the White House would want to switch out the planes, and it would mean that we were in for a much more dangerous flight than usual.

Trump had inadvertently stoked speculation about potential threats during the final day of the summit on July 8. As he met with various world leaders, from Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, he repeatedly brought up Iran’s longstanding attempts to kill him in comments to reporters.

After a press conference shortly before leaving Turkey in which Trump largely deflected questions about the plane........

© The Times of Israel