Trump’s Catering-Container Cover-Up

Let’s be clear: Protecting Trump from an Iranian assassination threat wasn’t the scandal. Using reporters as decoys, hiding what happened—and then going after journalists digging into the story—was.

Now we know why Donald Trump was completely obsessed with The New York Times reporting that he had to swap out planes in Turkey last month due to security concerns, to the point where he had Kash Patel pursue an FBI investigation and the Justice Department soon issued subpoenas to reporters in an apparent attempt to intimidate them.

Those subpoenas were eventually withdrawn, but we now know there was much more to the story: Trump was secretly whisked away in an airport catering truck and taken to a smaller military plane to fly out of Turkey, after U.S. intelligence identified a credible assassination threat from Iran.

It was like when Trump tried to hide the fact that he got a colonoscopy at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center during his first term. Or, more appropriately, like when he went to the underground bunker at the White House amid the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and was infuriated when word got out.

To Trump, all of this is weakness for a strongman who claims to defy threats, and you better believe being secretly whisked away in a catering truck is, for him, the ultimate humiliation.

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He also used reporters—whom he misled and who flew on the legacy Air Force One—as decoys while he flew safely on a different plane, along with Pete Hegseth. (They apparently left Marco Rubio on the other plane with the reporters). And unlike other times in history when something remotely like this happened—such as when George W. Bush was flown to secure locations after the 9/11 attacks—we were apparently never going to be told about this. If not for a leak to The Washington Post, Trump might have kept it hidden, even after misleading the media and the American public.

Just to recap what happened: Trump was so intent on using his controversial gift—the palace-in-the-sky jet from Qatar—that it was rushed into service without all of the defensive capabilities of the existing presidential aircraft. It reportedly lacked an antimissile defense system, even after extensive upgrades that cost several hundred million dollars.

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Trump flew on the jet to the NATO summit in Turkey in July. But on the way back, stopping first in the U.K. before coming to the U.S., he switched, we were told, to the legacy Air Force One, which he hates. He told reporters it was for “old time’s sake.”

But The New York Times reported the real reason he couldn’t fly the Qatari jet. Trump had recently made another threat of military attacks against Iran, and American intelligence had identified a credible Iranian threat against him or his aircraft. The Secret Service determined that the Qatari plane should not be used for his departure from Turkey.

But Trump did not actually leave Turkey on the legacy Air Force One, which carried the White House traveling press corps and some White House staffers. We’ve now learned that he and his security team engaged in an elaborate ruse.

Trump went up the stairs and entered the plane. He then secretly left the aircraft and was moved in an airport catering truck positioned at the rear of the plane, as if it were servicing the aircraft. He was then taken to a smaller military plane, a C-32A, which flew him out of Turkey.

Reporters had been instructed to pull down their window shades beforehand. When they later asked Trump in Britain why they were told to do that, he reportedly told them, “You’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with.”

The press corps later reported that Trump never visited them during the flight. And, of course, that’s because he wasn’t on the plane.

And somehow, before his eventual arrival in the United Kingdom, Trump rejoined the legacy Air Force One, allowing him to descend its stairs as though nothing unusual had happened.

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Then Trump and the White House kept silent about it—something the American people should have fully known. And the traveling press corps, there to report to the American people, was not only fooled and used as a decoy—with Trump even acknowledging they are probably on a dangerous flight—but apparently would never have been told the truth.

It’s all so wild that it’s already inspiring a million memes. But don’t let the absurdity of Trump hiding in a catering container obscure the seriousness of what happened: This was yet another cover-up by an administration that lies every day to the American people.