Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday that he would not attend his son Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas this holiday weekend. The text the president signed under his own name read: "While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr., and the newest member of the Trump Family, his soon to be wife, Bettina, circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so." He added that he felt it important to "remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time." [1][2] The couple had legally married in Palm Beach the day before. [1]

Twenty-four hours earlier, in the Oval Office, the president had told reporters the truth in cruder language. "This is not good timing for me," he said, before naming the cause: "everything called Iran and other things." He continued: "If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed." [1] Both the Oval Office quote and the Friday Truth Social post are on the public record. The Page Six story carried both, in order; no outlet has yet paired them as the single document they are.

The two-sentence document is the language a president uses when the operational tempo has shifted enough that his own family schedule is the cleanest way to say it. The paper's Friday lead closed the week on Rubio's "slight progress" from Helsingborg and a parallel Reuters wire that intelligence and military personnel were cancelling Memorial Day plans. Saturday opens with the same week's presidential reading of the same calendar, in the president's own posted words. Iran is the reason the wedding does not have the president.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington