United States President Donald Trump has confirmed that he secretly swapped planes due to a potential assassination threat from Iran during a NATO summit in Turkiye last month, and that he actually faced a “greater risk” on the decoy plane.

“I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, different plane,” Trump told reporters. “I just have to do what they say.”

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“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” he added. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for.”

The switch, which happened on July 8, involved the president being moved between aircraft in a catering truck and onto a military plane in Ankara, according to US media reports.

The White House said nothing publicly at the time, and the cover appears to have held until The Washington Post broke the story this week.

The Air Force One aircraft was still carrying journalists and top aides, who remained at apparent risk of an Iranian strike and did not know the president had left, when Trump exited the presidential plane.