In yet another scandal that took more than a month to leak, a threat during NATO Summit in early July caused the Secret Service to move Trump off Air Force One and into a different aircraft. The switch was an “elaborate ruse” facilitated by a catering-service vehicle, according to BBC News‘ Jessica Rawnsley.
Donald Trump secretly swapped planes as he left a NATO summit in Turkey last month, as part of an elaborate ruse in response to a possible Iranian threat, US media report. Trump boarded Air Force One in view of television cameras before being transported to a military aircraft with the help of a catering truck, the Washington Post said. Journalists and some White House staff on board did not know he had been smuggled out.
via BBC News‘ Jessica Rawnsley.
The “secrecy” aspect of this story is a bit of misnomer since the entire operation was caught on HD footage and diagrammed by news media.
Notably, Trump initially arrived in Turkey on the Boeing jet famously “donated” by Qatar (and blessed as “legally” “permissible” by Pam Bondi prior to her ouster) but apparently chose the old Air Force One because of nostalgia.
The clandestine maneuver came a day after the US renewed military strikes on Iran following a breakdown of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end the war. Trump had arrived in Turkey aboard a newer Boeing 747-8 donated by Qatar, but announced that he would leave on the old Air Force One ‘for old time’s sake’
via BBC News‘ Jessica Rawnsley.
Trump’s second stint in the Captain’s chair have been replete with aircraft- and flight-related scandals. In addition to the “gift” from Qatar, Kash Patel’s personal use of FBI planes caused the agency to be wrong-footed in multiple high-level investigations. Ditto that for Doug Burgum, who earned the moniker “Doug the Diva” for extravagant travel. And Trump nonsensically blamed the deadly crash at National Airport in D.C. on DEI, despite having fired an entire airline safety board a week prior.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Temu Goebbels got left in the dust? Say less.
Many have compared Donny’s “mobster shell game with planes” to Bill Clinton‘s similar maneuver in early 2000 (back during a rare stretch when America had an actual leader); but that decoy plane facilitated Clinton’s desire to try and diffuse a nuclear incident between Pakistan and India (among other goals). In this 2026 version, it’s a self-own after Trump bombed the crap out of Iran and whacked its supreme leader at the behest of Bibi Netanyahu.
We sleep in beds we make.
Finally, the timing of “Donald hitches ride on catering truck” sitcom has important implications for the (illegal and unprecedented) subpoenas his goons at SDNY issued to The New York Times. So argues Chris Geidner at LawDork News (linked below):
It’s also a story about the way the Trump [goons] lie to the public and to the press, as well as how senior administration officials—up to and including Trump—might have been willing to go so far as to put the lives of others, including members of the media, at risk. Finally, it’s a story of how the Trump administration quickly went on the offense in the aftermath of the ‘ruse’—subpoenaing some of the first reporters who dove into what was happening.
Chris Geidner, LawDork
Geidner deftly pieced together a damning timeline of NYT publishing a story on July 8, with “mob subpoenas” starting to fly mere hours later.
The Times had reported on July 8 that the use of the old Air Force One was a ‘security precaution’ in Turkey and then reported on July 9 that the Qatari-donated jet ‘lacks the same defensive countermeasures’ as the old Air Force One.
The next day, the Trump administration—via the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York—subpoenaed Times journalists, leading to the high-profile fight that ended with the office withdrawing the subpoenas (and others subsequently issued for phone records) at a hearing before a skeptical judge on July 23.
Chris Geidner, LawDork
The most-incredible takeaway from Geidner’s dot-connecting is that Donny’s mafia allowed—or perhaps intentionally directed—the press (following him, as usual, like hungry puppies) to facilitate their own demise.
If, as the Times reported, ‘Mr. Trump was being targeted on whatever airplane he was traveling on’ and, as it also reported, the Trump administration ‘purposely misle[d] reporters assigned to cover Mr. Trump, allowing the press to report that he was traveling on board a plane that was being used as a decoy,’ then it appears that the Times is reporting that it believes the Trump administration purposely misled reporters to publish information that the administration believed could make those reporters the target of an attack.
Think about the implications of this—’The Trump administration purposely misled reporters to publish information that the administration believed could make those reporters the target of an attack’—if it is true.
Chris Geidner, LawDork
If we’ve learned anything from being “governed” by sociopaths, it’s that depravity is a “Silence of the Lambs” well with no bottom.
UPDATE: just picked up longtime Barbara Starr’s live-hit on CNN and it’s very worth your time. In reporting this ridiculous piece for TrumpFile I struggled with using the word “decoy” because there were multiple aircraft airborne that could have been targeted by Iranian (or other) forces for an attack. Starr is usually very measured in her commentary so to question the legality on CNN’s air is important. watch this space.
