Netflix to Release Documentary on Trump's Decoy Plane Use After NATO Summit

Less than a month after the cloak-and-dagger caper came to light, Netflix is dropping a new documentary on the controversial use of a decoy plane by President Donald Trump on his return from a NATO summit in Turkey earlier this summer.

The latest installment from “Instadocs,” Netflix’s “expedited documentary series,” will explore the July maneuver by the Secret Service that left some journalists in the White House press pool fuming about whether the Trump administration had put reporters at unnecessary risk without informing them beforehand. The episode will premiere on Friday.

Netflix promises that the documentary episode will include interviews from reporters on board the decoy plane, from which Trump disappeared via an airline catering container truck. Details of the maneuver were first rreported in mid-August.

The reporters interviewed include MS Now’s Carol Leonnig, the Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe, AP photographer Alex Brandon, and Reuters reporter Gram Slattery. A former Secret Service agent and Air Force One flight attendant are also interviewed.

“Beyond showing the lengths the Secret Service will go to protect the president, this installment reveals the cost of that mission: to get him home safely, a plane full of reporters and the public they answer to were left flying blind,” Netflix said in a release.

The president’s disappearance from the July 8 flight wasn’t communicated to reporters or staff remaining on board the plain, and Trump used a separate military jet to depart Turkey.

Reporters, military experts and pundits debated afterwards whether the press pool and White House staff should have been loaded onto a plane without Trump given the active Iranian assassination threat that reportedly drove the president to use a decoy. At least one Democrat on the Hill demanded a congressional inquiry.

The Washington Post first broke news of the decoy operation last month. Only a handful of aides, including the president’s close assistant Natalie Harp, traveled with Trump on board the military jet used as a secure backup measure.

The public was led to believe Trump was on the Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet where reporters and staff remained, and was filmed boarding the plane before it departed Ankara.

“As the president has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats,” a White House spokesperson said of the operation last month after it was revealed.

The move was condemned at the time by Ned Price, former State Department spokesman under Joe Biden, as well as former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod.

“Misleading reporters in the moment and, worse yet, continuing to lie to the American people weeks later is never acceptable. As far as I know, it’s unique to this White House,” said Price.

Robert McDonald, interviewed for the Netflix documentary, previously spoke to The Independent about the decoy operation and called it a necessary security measure.

“It's been a very long two years of both domestic — and now international — potential assassination attempts,” McDonald said last month. “You've got to be creative. You've got to be nimble. You've got to make things happen.”

He added that he was confident there were “other assets that were up in the air” in place to protect the “decoy” Air Force One jet, which ferried journalists and staff from Ankara to a British airbase, then on to the U.S.

“There's no way in the world there was no care and concern for those other people on that plane,” said McDonald.