Haberman says Trump’s Air Force One guest list exposed his priorities
Key Takeaways
- •Trump flew with close aides Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, on a secret military flight from Turkey last month.
- •Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the press pool remained on the legacy Air Force One aircraft after Trump departed because of fears of an Iranian attack.
- •Haberman said Harp and Scavino are important because they provide personal support and help manage Trump’s social media feed.
- •Haberman noted that Walt Nauta now heads Oval Office Advance and was an indicted co-conspirator in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
- •She said keeping more top officials together could have been avoided because concentrating them in one place would increase the risk from a single attack.
President Donald Trump’s recent Air Force One switch fiasco appears to have revealed a great deal about what he values in his staff, according to reporter Maggie Haberman, based on the people he chose to bring with him on the secret flight.
Haberman is a journalist and author who has extensively covered Trump’s time in national politics, including the recent book about his second term, Regime Change, which she co-wrote with Jonathan Swan. This week, she appeared in an interview with Jessica Yellin, the founder of News Not Noise, and during the opening part of the conversation, Yellin asked Haberman about the significance of the staffers Trump selected to accompany him on a secret military flight out of Turkey last month.
As Yellin laid out in the discussion, Trump was accompanied by his close personal assistant Natalie Harp, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, top aide Walt Nauta and Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with the press pool, remained on the legacy Air Force One model that Trump left amid fears of an attack by Iran.
Looking at the specific relationship each person on the secret flight had with Trump, two possible reasons for their inclusion stood out: personal support and social media.
"In terms of the personal aides that Trump brought with him, it isn't surprising," Haberman explained. "In the sense that Walt Nauta, he is now the head of Oval Office Advance. He was also Trump's indicted co-conspirator in the Mar-a-Lago documents case by special counsel Jack Smith."
She continued: "Natalie Harp is with him in almost every meeting. She is the person who sits alongside the wall in the Oval Office, she goes and gets him printouts, as she did when Jonathan and I were in the Oval Office for a fact-checking interview for this book. And Dan Scavino is another longtime source of support. One throughline for Harp and Scavino is that they operate his social media feed, and so I could see a world where he wanted them there to help him with that."
Haberman also said there may have been a simple practical reason for Rubio and several other senior officials staying behind on the older Air Force One model. As she noted, it would be reasonable to think there were concerns about having too many top figures in the administration in one place, which could increase the damage from a single attack.
