Puck chief political columnist John Heilemann expresses his displeasure with President Donald Trump after Trump returned from a July trip to Turkey on a separate plane from the cabinet members and White House press corps amid a security threat from Iran. “This is not just lying to people,” Heilemann told MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace. “I just can’t imagine you could keep working for someone who would put you in that kind of jeopardy. It doesn’t make any sense to me without telling you.” <\/p>\n
NICOLLE WALLACE, MS NOW HOST: We’re back with John Hudson and John Heilman. Heilman, I can accept that the Secret Service is jumpy and scared, and they made an extraordinary decision. I just think that these things are mutually exclusive. You don’t then take Natalie Harp and the internet guy and the Diet Coke guy, you take the Secretary of State and the Treasury Secretary. JOHN HEILEMANN, PUCK NEWS, CHIEF POLITICAL COLUMNIST: Right, for sure. And of course, in the most extreme cases, if the Secret Service was that jumpy, there was another option, Rich, which was to keep Trump on the ground. And if the threat was that serious, it would have created a lot of complexity. They would have had to explain or lie about a bunch of things, like why he was staying in Turkey an extra day. But they had to lie in this instance, too. And they’ve had to explain a lot of things in the way they did it here, too. So, I mean, again, I feel sympathy for the Secret Service having to deal with this on short notice and under a lot of pressure, both, I mean, to keep the president safe and to keep the president happy. But Nicole, when it comes to White House staff, you’ve been great on this all week. And I know this strikes you in the same way as it strikes me. I mean, I traveled on Air Force One with President Clinton on multiple occasions, with President Obama on multiple occasions, with President Biden at least once. If I were in the press corps that traveled with Donald Trump right now, I would never travel with Donald Trump again. To me, the breach of faith there is so great, because this kind of thing would never have occurred to a reporter in any previous presidency, and certainly not during your time in the White House, where you would have thought, yes, if somebody gave you a hypothetical about this, would the president in the White House ever do this to you? There’s no reporter I know would have said, yeah, that’s plausible. That could happen. I think literally no one thought that was possible under any of those previous administrations, Republican or Democrat alike. But for the White House staff, do we know at this hour how many of them who stayed on Air Force One knew that they were decoys in that moment, knew that Trump was no longer on their plane and that they were decoys? Do we know that factually yet? WALLACE: John? JOHN HUDSON, WASHINGTON POST: I mean, what I can tell you factually, as I was trying to confirm this story, I did talk to some White House officials, some administration officials who were on the plane. And I said, this is our understanding that actually Trump got off the plane and he was smuggled out through a catering truck. And what they said was, are you serious? Are you kidding me? They had no idea. I do think that there were some officials who were on that plane who had an understanding of what was going on, but I can guarantee you there were some officials who did not know this and found this to be extraordinary and perhaps have a renewed faith in the strength of Washington Post reporting because it was fully vindicated in this case. WALLACE: Which is a good thing. HEILEMANN: Nicole, can I just ask you this question? If you were on White House staff and George W. Bush did this to you, would you stay and work for him? Or would you be like, I think I gotta go? WALLACE: Yeah, look, I was thinking about no, no, I would never stay. But it was a different time. And I mean, after 9-11, when you traveled, I would say a lot of people felt scared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n