DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – Hours after barring the news media from witnessing the return of six service members killed in Donald Trump’s Iran war, his White House posted images from the service on social media, including several showing the transfer case of at least one of the bodies.
One of the photos posted to X shows Trump at the “dignified transfer,” as the military calls them, with the forward part of the flag-draped case visible as airmen carried it off the C-17 transport plane. In two others posted to the White House Flickr account, a transfer case is visible as airmen load it into a van.
The press pool covering the event Wednesday was told that the families of the six Air Force crew members who died when their KC-135 refueling tanker crashed in Iraq did not want press coverage.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told HuffPost Thursday, “The families did not agree to press. They agreed to official photography.”
Leavitt did not respond to a follow-up question asking whether the families had been informed that the photos would be posted on social media rather than kept for archival purposes, as is the case with the vast majority of photos taken by White House photographers.
