Transcript of The President, His Plane and the Press

This is Maurice Shema, the host of a new podcast from Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and The New York Times. Last year, I spent 3 months embedded with a capital defense team. Their client had been on death row for more than 30 years, and now his execution date had been set. I followed along as the lawyers tried to prove something nobody had successfully done in 3 decades: that one of Texas's most notorious serial killers was actually innocent. The Last 12 Weeks. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. I was out for some drinks, sitting on a patio.

My wife and I were over at some friend's house for dinner, you know, having a really nice evening, a glass of wine and all that. My family and I had sat down to watch Sheep Detectives, a murder mystery. And right as we were about to find out from the sheep who had committed the murder, I get a call.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

And I pick it up and it's an FBI agent who identifies himself and says, "I'm in front of your house right now.

Are you coming home anytime soon?" When I got home, my wife was in the front yard with our kids and they were playing with some sparklers left over from the July 4th celebration. And she pointed to this unusual car sitting there across the street from our house. Inside were two FBI agents that were effectively staking us out.

My son is at the front of the house looking through the window, and he shouts, "They're here!" Last Friday night, as my colleagues from the Washington Bureau of The Times settled into their weekend routines, FBI agents showed up at their homes.

And the agent identifies himself, and he basically says, "I'm serving you with this subpoena." and summoned them to testify before a grand jury.

It was 2 sheets of paper. I mean, it wasn't even the official signed document. It was a photocopy of the subpoena.

The agents wouldn't say what the concern was, but I had no doubt what story they were talking about. They were talking about the Air Force One story.

It was an extraordinary move by the Trump administration in response to a set of stories published by The Times about the safety of the new Air Force One.

It was a fairly ordinary interaction, except for the fact that this is not something that is supposed to happen with reporters.

Today, we talk to one of the reporters behind those stories, White House correspondent Tyler Pager. It's Friday, July 17th.

Tyler, thank you for making time for us.

Thanks so much, Michael. Glad to be here.

So tell us about the reporting that you and our colleagues did that sparked this unexpected and very unusual response from the Trump administration, these subpoenas that the FBI has delivered to our colleagues.

Yeah. So to set the scene, Michael, the president is traveling to Turkey for the annual NATO summit, and he's doing so in his new Air Force One. —the one that's been donated by Qatar. And it's the first time he's taking the plane overseas.

Well, thank you very much. And before we begin on the plane—

He had just debuted the plane earlier this month around the July 4th, 250th birthday celebrations. He flew it to Mount Rushmore. The other plane was about 35 years old, and it was time and The president had complained for years that it was embarrassing for him to show up at international summits on the old plane, feeling that it didn't reflect American greatness and American innovation. And the president loves this new plane. It's been a fixation of his to get rid of the dated Air Force One and debut this glittering jumbo jet that has been gifted to him by the country of Qatar.

And I went to Boeing, I said, "Who has the best one?" They said, "Qatar. There's no— there's never been a plane like it." Frankly, we could—

And which he's put a lot of taxpayer money into. Correct.

So the Qatari government gives the president the plane, and then they spend months and hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting it because, of course, Air Force One is not any normal plane. It is carrying the American president. And there are a lot of modifications that need to be made to ensure that it's safe and has all the capabilities that the president may need at any given time. And the president is very excited about this plane and is eager to show it off, as are his aides that are traveling on it. They're posting photos and videos from inside the plane of the gold-encrusted walls and the big staircases and the plush seats and this— geometric carpets. And so there's just a lot of excitement from the president and his team that this plane is ready and that he's able to take it on an overseas trip.

So here he is arriving in Turkey for a summit with fellow presidents and leaders in a plane that finally, in his mind, befits the leader of the United States.

Exactly. So the president arrives in Turkey, and I'm on the ground in Ankara covering the NATO summit. And when he gets off the plane, he's the only world leader greeted by President Erdoğan, and he receives this over-the-top welcome ceremony that includes horses and the Star-Spangled Banner played by a band and fighter jets. And it's a ceremony that is most comparable to the one the Pope received when he visited Turkey— Wow. —last year.

Gets off a plane he thinks finally is worthy of the US, walks into a ceremony worthy of the president.

And then there's just a torrent of news.

Overnight, a new round of US attacks on Iran.

There's the resumption of hostilities between the US and Iran, which had been somewhat dormant because of the ceasefire and the ongoing negotiations.

They want to make a deal, but they don't know how to make a deal. And then they go around shooting ships at night.

So the US and Iran are trading strikes again.

We can play games, but I'm not sure I want to make a deal. Let's just finish the job.

Yep. And the president jumps into unleashing criticisms on the NATO allies, reviving criticisms he's had for some time that NATO allies didn't do enough to support the US in its war against Iran. That countries are not meeting their defense spending requirements. We pay far, far too much.

Billions and billions of dollars too much because it's unfair, because we're protecting them. So we protect them, but they're not there for us. Think of it. Doesn't work.

And so there's just so much going on that the plane was sort of the story of the week before because that's when it debuted. Domestically. And so there wasn't a whole lot of attention on the plane at that point because there was just so much else going on at the summit and with Iran.

When does that start to change?

So that changes the next day when the president is scheduled to leave Turkey and return back to the United States. It was a very short trip. What the president announces on Truth Social is that the new Air Force One, the Qatari-donated jet is going to be flown from Turkey to England to an Air Force base so that troops can get an opportunity to see it. Interesting. The president says he will be taking the old Air Force One, which is in Turkey. Not surprisingly, when the president travels overseas, they often have multiple planes and backup planes and other sorts of aircraft to transport all the stuff the president needs when he's overseas. And what the president says is that he'll be taking the old Air Force One, quote, "for old time's sake." Which is an unexpected explanation for a president who, as you just said, Tyler, is pretty openly obsessed with the superiority of this new plane compared to the old one. Exactly. It's surprising. And immediately there are questions about why there's this sudden last-minute change. Presidential trips are choreographed to the minute, and everything is done far in advance. Way before the president even departs the United States, there are advance teams that scout out locations and departures, and every piece of the president's trip is highly scheduled.

Mm-hmm. So it's a surprise to see a change made so soon to his departure. And people immediately start to ask questions about security. And so, Michael, remember, we are in Ankara, which is roughly 1,000 miles away from Tehran, and the war has started up again. And so there are questions about whether there are threats or risks to the president at a time when the US is launching more strikes against Iran and he's in the region, right?

This seems like the closest the president has been to Iran perhaps since the war began.

Absolutely. And also, it's important to point out that there have been questions about the security apparatus on this plane for months. Lawmakers and former military officials had been warning that they were concerned that the plane was made available to the president too soon. Mm-hmm. That is, the amount of work to retrofit a plane to make it safe for the president to fly on as Air Force One requires a lot more time than the months it took from when the president acquired the Qatari jet and when he flew on it for the first time.

And what are the systems aboard Air Force One that folks had feared would have been difficult to import to this Qatari-donated plane that the president is now using in this pretty compressed timescale that he got it in?

So broadly, there are concerns that there were not the same defensive countermeasures, including advanced anti-missile capabilities installed on this plane. People told us that there just wasn't the time to put all of those critical systems on the plane to ensure the president had the full scope of capabilities to protect the plane from any sort of issue or threat.

And I guess it's worth saying that Air Force One, the official old Air Force One, was specifically built for the purposes of protecting the American president, whereas this Qatari plane was originally constructed to carry lots of people in luxury and gets retrofitted to be secure. But inevitably, it's probably quite hard to put some of those very specific countermeasure technologies onto a plane that wasn't designed for them.

Right, Michael. In fact, if you compare photos of the old Air Force One and the new Air Force One, you can see on the old plane, under its wing, on its tail, aspects of defensive systems that you can't see on the new plane.

So as you start to have questions about why the president's plans have changed, and whether it's related to security concerns about this plane, what do you do next?

Remember, I'm still in Turkey reporting on the NATO summit, and I'm trying to figure out what's going on with this plane, but I happen to be sitting in a cavernous auditorium with hundreds of reporters from all over the world waiting for Trump to come out and give his final press conference before leaving. Not exactly the ideal place to do sensitive source-based reporting. Right.

Not a room in which you want to call people and say, "Hey, it's Tyler Pager from The New York Times trying to figure out what's going on with Air Force One." People would overhear that. Right.

But very quickly, a team of reporters comes together and starts asking questions. Go ahead. Hey, Sean McCreesh, New York Times. But why aren't you flying the new plane home? Say what? Why aren't you flying on the new Air Force One?

It's flying to Europe to one of the big bases, 2 or 3 of the big bases where we can show it to the people. And we'll be going home by normal methods. But we—

and what we learn is that the story that the president is saying on social media is not exactly what has happened. What has happened is that the Secret Service has grown concerned about the plane and has urged the president to switch his itinerary and not take this Qatari jet out of Turkey and revert back to the old Air Force One.

Which certainly suggests that they're worried that he might not be safe on the new plane flying out of Turkey in this moment. Correct.

Now, we don't have that fully confirmed at that moment, but I reach out to the White House to let them know this is what we're hearing and see if they have any comment. So, Michael, while this is happening, a senior FBI official reaches out to my colleagues in Washington and asks that we not run the story for national security reasons. He doesn't specify why and also asks us to identify our sources, which we do not do. Got it. So we continue to report. The president takes off from Turkey, then he lands in England, walks across the tarmac, and gets on the new Air Force One. The Qatari jet that was waiting for him in England. And when he gets on the new plane, he does a gaggle with the reporters on board.

What was the security concern that caused us to change planes?

We sent this one in.

And he sort of downplays any security concern.

So you're saying there wasn't a security concern? No, no. Why would there be?

But by the time he's doing that, me and my colleagues have confirmed that in fact it was. A security concern that caused the change in planes. And we decide to publish as the president is back on the Qatari jet flying from England to Washington.

If you'll permit me, I want to summarize what the story said, just so people understand. The story says that Trump flew the old Air Force One out of Turkey instead of the new Qatari-donated, retrofitted plane. As a security precaution related to the resumption of hostilities in Iran, and that the new plane does not have all the same features as the old one, and that the switching of the planes was done at the urging of the Secret Service. That's what the story says. That's correct. Obviously, that contradicts the president's claim that he was on Air Force One for old time's sake.

Right. And it also undercuts the president's public narrative about how magnificent and special and important this new Air Force One is. And what we learn in the aftermath of this story is that the president is outraged and furious that this has come out.

We'll be right back.

I'm David Sanger. I cover the White House and national security at The New York Times, and I try to explain what decisions made in Washington mean for you wherever you live. This is why The Times sends me to the Oval Office when the president is making a major decision. Or has me ride along on Air Force One on critical trips. And I talk to foreign leaders, exploring why they're so often at odds with the United States. We live in a world of misinformation and disinformation. It's never been more important to have reliable sources of on-the-ground reporting. If you want firsthand reporting on how U.S. policy affects the world, consider subscribing to The New York Times.

So Tyler, after this reporting is published by The Times and the president absorbs it and becomes quite agitated by it, what do you come to understand happens as a result?

So what my colleagues learn is that Kash Patel, the FBI director, goes to the White House last week and is directed to oversee a leak investigation into our reporting. Hmm. He spent roughly 8 hours at the White House on Friday running the investigation there instead of the FBI headquarters, which is an enormous departure from historical practice.

Historical practice would be what?

Well, first, that there would be complete separation between the White House and the FBI in terms of running these sorts of probes. The White House is supposed to be separate from the Department of Justice, and obviously the FBI is underneath the Department of Justice. When I covered President Biden, Merrick Garland, the then Attorney General, wouldn't even like to be in the same room as the president unless it was for a specific reason. And those norms have been completely shattered. But even this is a step further. Having the FBI director run an investigation out of the White House.

You described what Kash Patel is overseeing as a leak investigation. Just explain that.

So essentially, they're trying to figure out who provided information that informed our coverage of security concerns around the new Air Force One. And where this leads is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, issues subpoenas that FBI agents attempt to deliver to our homes on Friday evening. Mm-hmm. Now in my case, I wasn't at my home in DC. Huh. I had flown directly from Turkey to New York to attend a birthday party for my mother. So unlike some of my colleagues, I haven't yet received the subpoena.

Well, based on what you know about the subpoenas that have been delivered, what do they actually say and what do they require?

The subpoena calls for testimony in front of a grand jury in New York. For an alleged violation of federal criminal law. It does not have any specifics about the topic or the case, but based on who received the subpoenas, we know it was related to our coverage of Air Force One.

That's pretty vague. So is the Department of Justice, with these subpoenas, investigating Times journalists now?

So Justice Department spokeswoman said in a statement that we are not the targets, rather, quote, "those leaking classified information are." Hmm. But Michael, I want to underscore, being subpoenaed to a federal grand jury is a huge deal and something that does carry legal risks and does impact the way that we're able to do our jobs and is not something you see very often, if at all. In which journalists are called to testify. There are First Amendment protections and other policies and procedures that say the Justice Department is supposed to use subpoenaing journalists as a last resort, not a first step in a leak investigation. Hmm. And it's very rare for the Department of Justice to issue subpoenas for reporters to appear in front of a federal grand jury.

Gotcha. So here, I think we have to break the fourth wall for just a moment and acknowledge that The New York Times has lawyers and that they have responded to these subpoenas. So I want to read what the newsroom's top lawyer, David McCraw, had to say about the subpoenas just a few hours after they were issued. He said, quote, This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs. And so, Tyler, I want to ask you about that because these subpoenas are not occurring in a vacuum. We've reported a lot on this show, and The Times has reported a lot in its pages about the Trump administration's aggressive approach toward journalists and journalism in the second term. So should we see these subpoenas as an extension of that? Just put this into a larger context. Absolutely.

We've seen an aggressive attempt by this administration to pressure news organizations in a variety of ways, whether that's filing lawsuits, threatening to file lawsuits, kicking journalists out of the pool of reporters that travel and cover the president, changing the ways in which we are able to cover the president, criticizing news organizations, deriding them as fake news, just sort of the overall rhetoric about the role of a free press in the United States. Mm-hmm. And it's not just media organizations and free speech advocates that are concerned about this. Members of Congress are too. And one interesting thing about this whole situation is that the two men who played a big role in these subpoenas Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney in New York, and Todd Blanch, the Acting Attorney General, each had confirmation hearings before the Senate this week. Clayton is trying to become the Director of National Intelligence, and Blanch is nominated to serve as the official Attorney General. And during those hearings, Democratic senators really laid into these officials about the subpoenas. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York called them rough and aggressive.

I would just urge that This doesn't sound like the proper independent legal process that we would normally expect for issuance of a subpoena. The characteristics surrounding it seem rushed, aggressive, with an unnecessary urgency, and—

and questioned why the subpoenas were issued so quickly. It's not even clear that the subpoenas that you signed followed the administration's policy, which requires the government to first make all reasonable attempts to obtain information from other sources. What specific actions did you take before you signed the subpoenas? I, I can tell you that Ron Wyden of Oregon asked if the Justice Department made reasonable attempts to obtain information before they had issued the subpoenas. But I think the most interesting exchange was between Peter Welch of Vermont and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch. Do you support Mr.

Patel's efforts to subpoena and get reporters under the grill to disclose who their confidential sources are? The Department of Justice requires that I authorize it, which I did. And those reporters— we're not targeting reporters. They're material witnesses, just like a reporter would be a material witness to a car crash. Yeah, they're witnesses. And so in the question you want to ask them, is who were their sources. That goes to the heart of the First Amendment. No, the question we want—

so the crux of this is Blanche is saying all we're trying to do is figure out who talked to the reporters, who talked to us. And Welch is saying, hang on, that's a big deal because it impinges on our ability as reporters and the free press to do our jobs, right?

And just to explain that, if reporters are forced to divulge their sources, then those sources are not going to talk to us as journalists. That is why the First Amendment offers these protections to journalists. Exactly. I'm curious, Tyler, what the status of these subpoenas are at the moment and whether or not reporters, including you, are now gonna have to testify before a grand jury.

So here's what we know. The Times filed a motion on Wednesday to quash the subpoenas. Basically to have them tossed out. But the motion, like everything else in this case, is sealed at the moment, so we don't know the exact wording of it. The Times is trying to get all of it unsealed. Mm-hmm. And that motion is going to make its way through the court system, and ultimately it will be up to a federal judge to decide whether the subpoenas are permissible.

Gotcha. Simple question: have these subpoenas changed your ability and the ability of our colleagues to keep reporting on the story?

Look, it definitely makes things harder and more complicated, but we're not stopping. We are continuing to do our jobs and report out this story. We're going to try to figure out how safe this plane is and if any corners were cut in retrofitting it for the president.

Well, Tyler, to that point, I want to end our conversation by bringing us back to Air Force One, because from everything I can tell, this new Qatari-donated plane is not as robustly protected as the original Air Force One, and therefore flying on it would seem inherently riskier. Perhaps we'll never know how much riskier, but riskier for those on board, including members of the president's cabinet, presidential staff, journalists, including journalists from the Times who end up traveling with the president. And ultimately, a pretty simple question here is, does that make sense?

That's the question a lot of people are asking. And it's gonna be really interesting to see whether the president takes this plane overseas again. Because what this episode has revealed is it's not just lawmakers and people in the administration who are concerned, but it's also the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president of the United States.

Well, Tyler, thank you very much.

Thanks so much, Michael.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, for the second day in a row, Canadian wildfires combined with a heat dome left a plume of dense smoke over much of the northeastern United States. The smoke made the air unhealthy to breathe in a string of large cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Minneapolis. As New Yorkers can see, and in some neighborhoods, as New Yorkers can smell, smoke from the Canadian wildfires is over our our city. In New York City, Mayor Zoran Mondani urged residents to limit their time outdoors. At unhealthy levels, everyone— not just people with asthma and heart conditions, not just older adults— everyone may feel health effects. So today, every New Yorker should take precautions. Canada is struggling to contain the wildfires. As of Thursday, more than 100 100 active fires were burning across northwestern Ontario. And in a speech on Thursday night, President Trump made at times outlandish claims about the vulnerability of America's voting system, drawing selectively from documents that the White House published online and that Trump claimed had been covered up.

These disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible.

Trump, who has long argued without evidence that he won the 2020 election, focused on claims that China had compromised American voter rolls and had sought to undermine his reelection. But U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that China did not try to interfere in the 2020 race in an effort to change the outcome.

Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent, or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world.

Today's episode was produced by Jack DeSidero, Muj Zaidi, and Olivia Nadd. It was edited by MJ Davis-Lynn and Michael Benoit, and contains music by Dan Powell, Mary Lozano, Diane Wong, and Rowena Misto. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Sunday.

This week on The Wirecutter Show. Testing shampoo to find the very best in every category isn't easy. We had both men and women. We wanted it to be gender inclusive, all sorts of hair lengths from short to medium to long. Color-treated hair, chemically processed hair, natural hair, gray hair. But at Wirecutter, we don't let that stop us. Tune in to hear about why shampoo is important and what you might be doing wrong in your hair care routine. Find The Wirecutter Show wherever you like to listen.