Trump's first comment on the Flydubai plane incident

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the attempted hijacking of a Flydubai plane, describing the passengers' efforts to control the attacker as "absolutely astonishing." Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “It appears that the co-pilot may have been a terrorist,” adding that “Netanyahu told him that he believed the hijacker was planning to crash the plane.”

Trump also praised the actions of a passenger who was credited with helping to regain control of the plane despite having no experience in flying planes. He said about that passenger: “He had never flown a plane, and rarely traveled by air, and even though he had never flown a plane before, he grabbed the control stick, raised it up, and adjusted the plane’s position so that it was level before it crashed.” The US President expressed his great admiration for the passenger's explanation that he knew what to do because he was watching the program "Air Disasters," adding that he personally did not like watching this program "because bad things happen in it."

“But he said he watches it a lot, and he kind of learned how to fly from watching that show,” Trump said. Regarding the war on Iran, Trump reiterated that he expects it to end “soon, whether through negotiations or the use of force.”

He said: "You might blow them up. We have to make that decision: Do we blow them up or make a deal? The war will end very soon, one way or another."

Earlier in his remarks, he indicated that the war with Iran would end “soon,” and he expected fuel prices to fall quickly soon afterward. Trump's statements are the latest example of his prediction that the seven-month-old war "will end soon."

Earlier this week, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, "We're going to win; from my perspective, it's going to be over one way or another, and it's going to be over very quickly."