‘The President Is Embarrassed’: MS NOW Insider Reports Trump is Red-Faced Over Air Force One Flap

President Donald Trump was “embarrassed” by having to switch planes on his way home from the NATO Summit in Turkey, US Secret Service sources told MS NOW Reporter Carol Leonnig.

Trump told reporters in Ankara he was not using his brand new Air Force One, a $400 million retrofitted jet gifted from the government of Qatar, to leave the summit — instead claiming the aircraft was being taken to show to soldiers at a military base.

The claim sparked widespread suspicion, including from former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who called Trump’s explanation “a cover story.”

Leonnig earned the ire of White House spokesman Steven Cheung Thursday, who called Leonnig a liar for reporting security concerns had sparked the switch.

Speaking Thursday on The Moment with Katy Tur, Leonning said her sources are being forced into a delicate position with the president:

KATY TUR: But, Carol, it has been an uncertain time, and Turkey has been in the area, an uncertain place. It didn’t become uncertain when Donald Trump landed. It was uncertain before he took off. How does a decision get made to fly a plane like this to that area? Given all all that you’ve reported?

CAROL LEONNIG: Yeah, the the perfect pristine question here, Katie, a Secret Service source told me last night when Priya [Sridhar] and I were working on this story. That and hats off to her, by the way, for all of her detailed reporting about the capabilities of this plane and the risks that former air force generals raised about him taking it anywhere.

End of story. North Dakota, Mount Rushmore, wherever he wanted to go. They didn’t want him to do it because it wasn’t considered as safe.

The Secret Service source who I spoke to last night said, this is a dancing on the head of a pin in a way, because the Service wants Donald Trump to be happy. They do not want to embarrass him, but they do not want him to be in danger, which is a worse sort of fate for them, if you will.

They do not want him to be in peril, in the way that many people thought George Bush was, flying around in the middle of 9/11, and there was real panic about that. Was he somewhere safe? And they didn’t feel that he was.

The Secret Service knows, top, top officials in the Secret Service know, according to my source, that the President is embarrassed by the idea of having to switch out this plane, which is part of the reason he apparently sort of made up a story about showing it off to troops in the UK, and they are trying to placate a person who has insisted this plane is perfect and they are trying to, you know, no, sorry to put finer words on this, but they’re trying to save his life and save the stability of the democracy at the same time.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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