(NewsNation) — President Trump was so worried about Iran attempting to kill him last year that he quietly took a private flight while aides rode on the Trump campaign jet as decoys.
That’s among the revelations offered in a forthcoming book, “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power” by Alex Isenstadt, a senior political reporter at Axios.
“What it illustrates is the level of fear and concern within the upper echelons of the Trump campaign and the Secret Service about Trump’s safety,” Isenstadt told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” on Monday.
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He said the plane switch came after the second assassination attempt on Trump. Iran had threatened to have the former president assassinated following the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
The Trump campaign staffers who rode on the regular campaign jet emblazoned with Trump’s name did not know about the ploy beforehand, Isenstadt said.
“A lot of them didn’t necessarily buy the idea that they weren’t being used as bait,” he said.
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“They were still really taken aback by it. Some of them wondered why they didn’t just end up flying commercial to where they needed to go. From their standpoint, it was like, ‘Why are we being in this plane when there’s concern that maybe it could be shot down by the Iranians?”
Campaign staffers referred to their trip as “the ghost flight.”
Isenstadt said Trump was privately rattled by the prospect of Iran trying to have him killed, in contrast to his public comments.
