In July, at a NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump was smuggled out of his location inside a catering truck before being transferred to a military jet. While in Turkey, the Secret Service had learned of a credible intelligence threat by the Iranians to assassination President Trump while he was aboard Air Force One. So while the press and other White House staff were left on the plane to fly back to the U.S., the President flew home on another military plane. No one knew this though until this week and as they do with everything related to President Trump, the press corps lost their ever loving minds over the story.

Their primary concern, weeks later, is that nobody told them what was happening.

The details are straight out of a spy novel. Trump was moved covertly, switching from his planned aircraft to a different plane on Secret Service orders. The threat from Iran was serious enough that the security apparatus decided the normal protocol — president boards Air Force One with a full entourage of reporters and staff — was too dangerous. So they improvised. A catering truck. A military jet. No press pool.

Trump himself described the situation plainly: "I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane... I do what they say... I guess there was a threat out there. I didn't really ask too much about it." That's a president deferring to the people whose literal job is keeping him alive. Unremarkable, you'd think.

You'd be wrong. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly walked out on reporters asking about the incident, and the White House press corps has been in a sustained meltdown about being excluded from the evacuation. The grievance isn't that the president was nearly assassinated. It's that journalists weren't given a seat on the escape vehicle.

CNN's Jake Tapper, to his credit, provided some historical context. He noted that he once "flew to Afghan. w/different president on AF1" and that "an insurgent missile struck Bagram runway before landing." USA Today's Susan Page also recalled being informed of similar secret travel arrangements by President Clinton. This isn't new. Presidents have been moved covertly under threat for decades.

But that context hasn't stopped the broader press from treating this like a transparency scandal rather than what it actually was: a security operation. One reporter's response to reporters complaining "they left us to potentially die" was blunt: "Sorry, the Secret Service's job is to protect the leader of the free world, not a White House correspondent — you people are completely replaceable."

Perfectly said. The Secret Service exists for one purpose during an active threat, and it isn't making sure a CNN producer has a good angle for the live shot. When there's credible intelligence that a foreign government wants to kill the president, the security detail doesn't take a vote on who gets to come along.

The press argument, stripped to its core, is that their access to the president should override operational security during an assassination threat from a hostile foreign power. Which is an interesting position for people who spent four years insisting Trump didn't take threats seriously enough.