Funny how the story always changes. First we were told President Trump switched planes in Ankara because of “security concerns.” Then it was so service members could “tour the aircraft.” Now, a month later, the Washington Post and New York Times finally let the real version out: Trump boarded the old powder-blue Air Force One on camera, then crawled off the back of it inside a catering truck and vanished onto a smaller military jet while his entire press corps sat in the decoy with the window shades down, thinking he was right up front.
A month. They sat on this for a month. Ask yourself who benefits from the delay.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsHere is what actually happened on the tarmac at Esenboga Airport in Ankara on July 8. Trump had just told the NATO summit that the ceasefire with Iran was “over” and promised “powerful strikes” to come. He had flown in on the new Qatari-gifted 747, the one a foreign government handed him like a party favor and that the Pentagon still hasn’t finished retrofitting. Officials announced he would fly out on the older plane instead. Cameras caught him boarding it. Then, according to the Post’s sourcing, a catering truck pulled up, Trump got inside, and that was that. He was ferried to a C-32A, the same smaller jet that had been carrying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Three aircraft departed separately for the UK. The press corps was on none of them with the president. They were on the decoy.
The pool reporter filed a note at 8:43 p.m.: “We have been advised to keep our window shades in the press cabin closed. See you on the other side.” Nobody told them why. Nobody told them the man they were supposed to be covering was already gone.
Later, Trump told those same reporters the shades were closed “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.” Then he added, with what I’m sure was a warm smile: “If I go, you go. Right?”
davidbenito from istanbul, turkey (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsExcept he made sure he wouldn’t go. They were the ones on the dangerous flight. He was on a different plane entirely, and he let them sit there in the dark, literally, serving as cover. The decoy plane with the press aboard is the one any Iranian asset would have been watching. The one with the big recognizable paint job. The one full of American journalists.
When they landed at RAF Mildenhall in England, the pool waited roughly 20 minutes before cameras were set up under the wing. That is triple the normal time. Long enough, as CNN noted, for Trump to get off the C-32A, walk over, and get back on Air Force One before anyone could film him. When he finally appeared at the door, the stairs were already in position and the door was already open. The whole thing was staged. The press saw what they were meant to see.
Singlespeedfahrer (CC0) via Wikimedia CommonsAnd when a reporter asked why he switched to the Qatari plane for the flight home, Trump said it was to give service members “a chance to tour the Aircraft.” Pressed on whether there were other issues: “no issues.” That was a lie, told to the faces of people who had just unknowingly served as his decoy. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung later confirmed the philosophy in so many words: “we use every tool at our disposal, including distraction and misdirection.”
Here is what I cannot stop thinking about. A foreign government, Qatar, gifts a 747 to the president of the United States. It becomes Air Force One. The president flies it into a war zone adjacent country. Then he abandons it for a decoy, sneaks off in a food truck, and uses his own press corps as an unknowing shield against an assassination threat. And the official line for a month was “security concerns” and “aircraft tours.”
The little guy gets lied to every single time. The only question is which lie they will swap in next when this one stops working.