The "daily guidance" the White House sends out evenings to reporters covering the president had its usual, matter-of-fact and somewhat predictable tone in the Monday schedule. President Joe Biden would start his day, as usual, getting the President's Daily Brief, then head to Joint Base Andrews to board Air Force One en route to Warsaw, Poland, where Biden is set to speak Tuesday.
Reporters in the press pool would be ferried to the airport to mark his departure, as usual, and those traveling with the president would already be on the plane. National security adviser Jake Sullivan was promised to "gaggle" on the plane – meaning he'd brief the traveling press on the message Biden intended to send the world on the first anniversary of Russia' s invasion of Ukraine.
Except the schedule was a ruse. Biden had already left – not for Warsaw but for war-zone Kyiv, a trip that would entail a flight to Germany on a small plane and then a 10-hour, darkened train ride to the Ukrainian capital. In a stealth trip that was months in the planning, the American president – whose every public movement is typically chronicled hour-by-hour by a press pool, cable TV and social media – had managed something unthinkable in his uber-scrutinized world: a secret trip overseas.
"It was bold. It was risky," White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield told reporters in a conference call after Biden had arrived. And it was meant, she said, to make it very clear to the Ukrainians, to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to the world that the United States was not wavering in its commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty a year into the Russia-provoked war.
It was also a strong signal to the American public as Biden embarks on an expected campaign for a second term as president. Amid concerns about Biden's age, the image of the 80-year-old president making an unprecedented trip into a war zone where there was no American military presence to protect him on the ground was a powerful one.
"There's always an incredible amount of work that goes into any presidential trip," Jonathan Finer, White House deputy national security adviser, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday morning. "You usually don't have to worry that much about the physical security of the boss."
Presidents are well-protected, putting them in the paradoxical position of having less control over their own movements even while serving as one of the most powerful leaders in their world. Simple excursions out to dinner require advance planning and omnipresent Secret Service protection at the restaurant.
It can be frustrating: Former President Bill Clinton once went out for a jog on the streets of Washington, D.C., and Secret Service agents had to race after him in their suits.