{"id":20957,"date":"2026-04-05T01:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T01:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-addresses-criticism-trump-is-awol-during-missing-airman-search\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T01:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T01:22:07","slug":"white-house-addresses-criticism-trump-is-awol-during-missing-airman-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-addresses-criticism-trump-is-awol-during-missing-airman-search\/","title":{"rendered":"White House addresses criticism Trump is AWOL during missing airman search"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The White House is pushing back against mounting criticism that President Donald Trump has not formally addressed the search<\/a> for a missing American airman in Iran after the country shot down its first U.S. warplane since the raging conflict began.<\/p>\n

The president has not made any public speeches or appearances regarding the search-and-rescue operation. His last public address was on Wednesday, when he gave a primetime speech in which he attempted to make a case for his war to the nation.<\/p>\n

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sought to quell questions from reporters and speculation swirling on social media by issuing a statement on X <\/a>late Saturday afternoon. “There has never been a President who has worked harder for the American people than President Trump. On this Easter weekend, he has been working nonstop in the White House and Oval Office. God Bless him,” Cheung said.<\/p>\n

Questions about Trump’s whereabouts came to a boil on Saturday as one freelance photographer who covers the White House sought to put a rest to a rash of guesswork — untethered to any evidence.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

An hour later, Cheung issued his statement noting that Trump spent Saturday working at the White House.<\/p>\n

MS NOW spotted a Marine sentry standing guard outside the West Wing a couple of times on Saturday, suggesting the president was working inside. Notably, Trump did not visit his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, outside Washington on Saturday as he usually does when he stays at the White House on weekends.<\/p>\n

In an interview with NBC on Friday<\/a>Trump said the downing of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet over Iran would not affect ongoing negotiations with the country. When asked by The Independent<\/a> what he’d do if the pilot is harmed or captured by Iranians, Trump replied: “Well, I can’t comment on it because — we hope that’s not going to happen.”<\/p>\n

But on Saturday, he issued a fresh threat to Iran on his 10-day deadline, which expires Monday, for the country to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

“Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The president also posted about a “massive strike in Tehran” which allegedly killed “many of Iran’s Military Leaders,” though Trump did not provide additional details on the strike he cited. The White House did not respond to MS NOW’s inquiry on when the strike happened and whether any new military leaders were killed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Emily Hung is an associate White House producer for MS NOW.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apr. 4, 2026, 7:48 PM EDT The White House is pushing back against mounting criticism that President Donald Trump has not formally addressed the search for a missing American airman in Iran after the country shot down its first U.S. warplane since the raging conflict began. The president has not made any public speeches or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}