Media Must Use AF1 Lies to Cover Trump More Critically

On July 8, Trump secretly slipped off Air Force One via an airport catering truck while the White House told the press he was aboard the plane. Reporters and staff were left on the original aircraft — unwitting decoys — with no knowledge of the swap. Trump later snuck back onto Air Force One in Britain to exit as though he'd been aboard the entire flight. When reporters asked why they'd been ordered to keep their window shades down, Trump joked: "But if I go, you go. Right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions." He never disclosed that he had lied to them — directly and through his press office — about where he was. When later asked about it, he simply said: "That's up to Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do." A clean, effortless lie. Again. 

This episode is not primarily a security story. It is a story about a president who lies reflexively, compulsively, and without remorse — to the press, to the public, and apparently to his own staff. The same man who used reporters as human decoys without their knowledge is the same man who has spent six years lying about elections, lying about classified documents, lying about crimes, and lying about Ukraine. The lying is not incidental. It is the presidency.

We call on the media to use this moment as a reset — to stop covering Trump's statements as though they require only basic fact-checking and start covering them with the baseline assumption that this is a president who does not tell the truth. The public deserves a press corps that has finally learned its lesson.