What to Do About Donald Trump Duping the Press

Donald Trump, for one, would not have visited the press cabin given that he wasn’t on the flight, as the Washington Post revealed in a blockbuster story last week. Trump had boarded the plane but secretly exited with several aides through an airport catering truck to a smaller plane due to an Iranian threat. That left members of the media and some administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on what was essentially a decoy plane. “It was a shock to learn,” Jacqui Heinrich, the new president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, tells me.

Officials have since told the Post that F-16s served as escorts for both planes and the CIA reportedly had “low confidence” in the Iranian threat. Still, journalists aboard the Ankara flight have expressed frustration about being kept in the dark about the president’s whereabouts, even long after the threat had passed, and potentially being put in danger. “We never were provided any opportunity to consent to being used like this,” one told the paper. “We aren’t Air Force or Secret Service — we didn’t sign up for this job to put ourselves on the line to protect the president.”

Heinrich, who serves as senior White House correspondent at Fox News and anchor of The Sunday Briefing, began her one-year term as president following last month’s rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which she’ll be in charge of next spring. I spoke to Heinrich about how she’s responding to the press being kept in the dark about the president’s whereabouts, her plans for next year’s dinner — yes, Trump is invited again — and press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s surprise departure.

What did you think when you saw this Washington Post report that President Trump didn’t fly with members of the press and some administration officials, as everyone was led to believe?

There were a few concerns. My inclination is always to try to create solutions. We have seen through our experience — I’ve been on this board for two terms now — and especially under this administration, we tend to get better results when we’re not fighting about it in the press and we’re actually going to them, explaining our position and asking for solutions and trying to figure out why something happened and how it happened that way and what we can do about it.

First, talk to the poolers who are on that plane to make sure that they are okay. Obviously, that can be a scary thing to learn about. And then talk to the managers of the outlets who represent our biggest organizations who have the most people pooling regularly to figure out what issues this raises for them.

One thing that I spelled out in the letter to our members that leaked was that we don’t want, as news organizations, to be unwittingly transmitting false information and then not have an opportunity afterward to correct the record. The reporters obviously were more concerned about having felt like they were in a threatening situation, and that’s also a concern for their managers. Make sure that you represent both things in talking to the White House and figure out what’s practical and what we can do about that. We want to make sure that we have continuous coverage, independent coverage of the president.

I had a good conversation with the White House about all these points. They have a solid understanding of our position, and we’re still continuing to work through that.

This 2000 plane-swap incident with Bill Clinton came up afterward. In that situation, they alerted the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. Is that what you would hope if this ever were to happen again?

My first hope is that they keep the press with the president. That is the purpose of the pool. And we understand that there are circumstances in which the Secret Service is going to make a call in the moment in an evolving situation to do what they need to do to protect the protectee. And that is the president. They may not have the ability to advocate for us to accompany him in that moment.

There are a number of historical examples where stuff like this happened. There were secret trips to Ukraine, to Afghanistan, to Iraq. Examples that you could look to where sort of covert methods were used to conceal the president’s whereabouts. In all of those scenarios, either the press or a portion of the pool or the full pool came with the president, or it became clear immediately after the fact what had happened. Neither of those things happened in this scenario. And, concerningly, we were not able to correct the record in real time or immediately after the threat had passed. That is of paramount ongoing concern, especially when you’re dealing with the president who’s had so many attempts on his life.

While we had the advantage of advance planning for secret trips, most recently with Joe Biden to Ukraine, where we were able to, as a board, negotiate a press presence on that trip, we might not have the advantage of future planning. So we’ve gone through a number of scenarios and hope to get some results there.

I can imagine that journalists who were on that flight out of Ankara were alarmed by the decoy news. Do you feel like part of your role is to reassure them that when they’re getting on a plane, presumably with the president, that they’re going to be as safe as possible?

I’m not in a position to assure them of that. I think that everybody accepts that when you are in close proximity to somebody like the president, especially in these times, you accept a certain amount of risk. And that extends not just to a plane, but — there was an incident outside of the White House recently on 17th Street, someone was shot. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, there was an assassin.

If you’re in a motorcade with the president, if you’re staying at the same hotel as the president in the press pool, if you’re on a trip, this could happen anywhere. And I don’t have the ability to tell them about all the ways that they’re being kept safe because I’m not the one leading that effort. That’s the Secret Service’s job. And, actually, their job is really to protect the president. You have sort of a tertiary benefit of being within the defensive bubble.

My job is to assure our members that I’m advocating for them — whether it’s a concern about their safety, a concern about access, a concern about being able to report accurate information — that I’m hearing all those things and then bringing all those things to the White House. I would never want to make a promise that I can’t keep.

You mentioned the Correspondents’ Dinner; what was your experience like at the dinner?

The first one?

The second one, last month’s dinner.

We didn’t have an assassination attempt. I was on the floor underneath the table with a Secret Service agent, his gun drawn standing over me in an evening gown the last time. So it was measurably better from my perspective.

Obviously you saw there was criticism. There were times where it didn’t feel like a lighthearted roast but more like insults, directed at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and others. And then you have journalists, like Peter Baker at the Times, saying, “It’s time to rethink the dinner.” Now that you’re in the position to think about next year’s dinner, are you considering these concerns of journalists or some of the points that were made?

This dinner precedes President Trump. It will continue after President Trump. And we will invite the president no matter who the president is every year. I also think that for reporters who actually cover the White House and are in front of the president on a daily basis, the stuff that we heard that day is not a shock to us. This is someone we cover closely. Any number of us have had him push back or snap at a question that we’ve asked or made a comment.

You’ve taken a number of jabs over the years. 

I have myself. So I think that the outrage is external. As far as the calls before the dinner to cancel the dinner and not give him a platform, I would point out that there was not a single member of the White House Correspondents’ Association on the letter, and I don’t think anyone who had covered the beat in recent years. And Peter Baker, I mean, the New York Times stopped buying tickets to this dinner like 20 years ago. We have our sort of regular usual complainers who have their perspective on what this dinner is and whether it should happen. And we expect that.

But what this dinner is is a recognition of the importance of the First Amendment, the role of the free press, the work that we do in service of the First Amendment, recognizing excellent journalism, and also awarding scholarships to the next generation of people who want to do what we are doing. I thought that having the president onstage, while we recognized some reporting that was, by the way, very critical of him —

Seeing him there as The Wall Street Journal, which was sued by the president, accepted an award for its Epstein coverage. 

Shook all their hands. I thought it was valuable to have him taking part in a tradition that recognizes the importance of the free press. And we will continue to hold this dinner when he’s out of office. And he’s already said he’s going to come next year. It’s going to be at the Hilton. If they want to complain about it, that’s fine, but it’s happening.

Remarkable camera angle of President Trump as he listens to Wall Street Journal reporters receiving an award for their investigation into Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — which they pursued despite Trump’s threats and lawsuit. pic.twitter.com/mCMTlc7teu

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) July 25, 2026

Do you think we’ll get a comedian next year?

I can’t give anything away. It’s way too early for that.

All right. Were you surprised to see Karoline Leavitt stepping down at the end of this month?

I was. She had said to a number of people, including me, most recently before the second baby, that she intended to stay the whole time. She’s a huge and integral part of the president’s operation in terms of getting his view and the administration’s perspective into news stories and also defending it from the podium. She’s a very effective communicator. And I think it’s a big loss for them. And I think we’re seeing how much of a surprise it was by the fact that there’s not an immediate successor in mind. She’s a unique talent, and she’ll be hard to replace.

I’m also not surprised because when you talk about her reason for doing this, she’s got two kids under 2. This is a job that’s like, there are no office hours. It’s constant. You’re not just getting calls from the president, but you’re also getting calls from all of us. So I fully understand how she came to this decision. I take her at her word when she says she’s still going to be involved because part of her value to us was that she had such proximity to the president. She was able to talk to reporters in a way that was substantive. It wasn’t talking points. It was really the snapshot of what he was thinking in that moment.

Comparatively, when covering the Biden administration, you would ask then–press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre the same question, and it was apparent that she was not close to the decision-makers. [Leavitt] had that going for her, and I think she had his confidence to be able to make decisions on how much to share with the press without having to be afraid of her own shadow. I think that there are maybe some people who have aspirations to succeed her who would be afraid of upsetting him because they just don’t have his trust and the closeness to him. I’m not sure where they’re going to go for that. We might not get a decision for some time because this did come as a surprise and it’s a hugely important role. The president is, after all, his biggest spokesman. So maybe we’ll see more of him in the interim.

A lot of names are being floated: Kari Lake, Monica Crowley, Scott Jennings. Trump often talks about “central casting,” and he may have an idea of the type of telegenic person he wants at the podium. Do you have any predictions?

I would never make a bet on what the president might do. I think that’s a dangerous game, and you’d probably lose money — a lot.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.