NEW YORK (VINnews) U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he spoke at length with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the dramatic incident aboard a Flydubai flight bound for Israel, describing the co-pilot as potentially either a terrorist or mentally unstable.

“It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job, and he stabbed the pilot,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump said Netanyahu and others had told him that the Indian captain, Smit Machchhar, was seriously wounded but managed to open the reinforced cockpit door and alert passengers. Israeli passengers then entered the cockpit and helped subdue the Omani co-pilot.

Trump recounted the actions of Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun, a plumber, who has since been hailed as a hero in Israel. According to Trump’s account, Hayun pulled the attacker away from the controls and, as the aircraft was plunging, grabbed the controls and helped level the plane.

“He took the stick, lifted it up, and leveled out the plane before it crashed,” Trump said. He added that Hayun had never flown an aircraft and had learned some basic principles of flying from watching the television program Air Disasters.

Trump, however, repeatedly stressed that he was recounting information provided to him rather than independently verified facts.

“That’s the story that I heard. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got from Bibi and from a couple of other people,” he said. Trump also cautioned that investigators did not yet have definitive evidence that the co-pilot intended to crash the aircraft.