Shocking update on Trump's Air Force One escape

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (0:01)
Trump's Air Force One escape takes a wild turn when you find out who he took with him and who he left behind. And I've got three interviews, Bernie Sanders, Norm Eisen and Abdul El Sayed. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
We have a huge update here, following up on the reporting from yesterday about Donald Trump secretly swapping off Air Force One in a catering truck using that plane as a decoy during an Iranian assassination threat. Well, we've now got the follow up reporting on exactly who Trump brought with him into safety and who he left behind. And this is a pretty telling organizational chart if I've ever seen one out of this White House. So here's the breakdown. The people who got smuggled off in the catering truck and flown to safety with Trump on that small, secure C-32A include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that was the only cabinet official who made the cut, plus personal aid Natalie Harp, longtime body man Dan Scavino and Walt Nata, who you might remember from helping Donald Trump move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago. That's it. That's the safety list. Hegseth and three of his closest personal staffers. Now, importantly, here's who got left on the other plane that was, by definition, still publicly identified as Air Force One, although that was a plane that the alleged Iranian threat believed the president to still be on, meaning it was essentially a bait plane. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Besson, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Communications Director Stephen Chung, Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Needham, and Staff Secretary Wale Sharf, along with, of course, the entire White House press pool. Now, for a White House built on loyalty and yes men, I would imagine there's something pretty telling about who Trump needed with him and who he decided was expendable. And remember, this comes as Trump rebuked reporters just days ago when he was asked about reports that he wanted Vance to be the 2028 nominee, his heir apparent. He couldn't even get behind his own vice president, so he rebuked those reporters. So already the loyalty is a one way street as Donald Trump prepares to watch Vance square off with Rubio and God knows who else is going to be in that primary. But the fact that he left every cabinet member other than Hegseth twisting in the wind on that bait flight really does say something. And that brings us right back to the themes that mattered from the very first version of this story, because none of them have changed. For example, this is still a White House that treats everybody who isn't named Donald Trump as expendable, only now we know that the circle of trust is so small it doesn't even reliably include his own cabinet or his own communications director. This is still the story of a plane that Trump swore was safe and modern enough to be worthy of the presidency that he personally refused to fly on the second real danger was on the table, thereby proving that whatever that Qatari jet actually is, it was never about security.
And this is still ultimately a story about a guy who has never once in any context, any capacity, put anyone else's safety ahead of his own, not his staff, not the press. And now we know not even the people who are supposed to be running the country alongside him. And once again, it's worth noting here that while Donald Trump engages in all of this behavior, this self-dealing and self-serving behavior, Republicans could stop this. They could step up. And yet they have decided to contract all of their autonomy over to Trump. Remember, they have majorities everywhere. House, Senate, White House. They have oversight power. They have subpoena power to demand real answers about who knew what when on all of these scandals. And yet once again, they won't use any of it because holding Donald Trump accountable has simply never been the point for this Republican party. Protecting him, even if it means sacrificing their own physical safety, their own lives has always been not just the top priority, but the only priority of today's GOP.
Next up are my interviews with Bernie Sanders, Norm Eisen and Abdul El Sayed. But one quick request. As you know, all of my content is free. It's never paywalled. But I'm going to ask for a bit of financial support this once. If you haven't yet grabbed a copy of my new book, The Day After, it is available now. I'm going to put a link right here on the screen, also in the post description, in the comments. So if you would like to support my work, if you'd like to support independent media more broadly, this is the perfect way to do so. I should also note that I'm going to try this week to land on the New York Times bestseller list, so any help that you're able to give me is really, really appreciated. Thanks so much. OK, here are my interviews with Bernie Sanders, Norm Eisen, and Abdul El Sayed.