By Asawin Suebsaeng|Zeteo
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
One of the reasons I’m glad to no longer be a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association or the White House press pool is that I can easily decline being used as an in-flight decoy and human shield for the dumbest, most blundering U.S. president who ever lived. I can’t fathom a less honorable or more meaningless way to die – and yes, I’m taking into account that Trump’s fellow gold-plated sadist Saddam Hussein used body doubles, who might’ve had to take a bullet for him.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume (as we should probably never do) that we can take the Trump administration’s claims and the Israeli government’s intel at face value: that there was a credible threat that Iranian-government-backed actors, in retaliation for Trump’s illegal war, could try to blow up Air Force One during Trump’s flight out of a NATO summit in Turkey last month. (Allowing for the Washington Post’s reporting on Wednesday, that the CIA had “low confidence” in there being a threat.)
It would make sense for any American president to have additional security measures in a situation like that. I’m told the White House has been taking the possibility of Iranian-linked attacks on Trump’s wife and other family members incredibly seriously and has acted accordingly during this hellish war that Trump was stupid enough to start. (More on that soon, here at Zeteo…)
But in recent days, multiple news outlets have revealed how Trump and his team conducted themselves like cartoon-villain caricatures in an attempt to make the former host of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ feel safer in the air.
“Mr. Trump boarded Air Force One in Ankara in front of the cameras – but he then hid in a catering container and was taken to another plane on which he left the country,” the New York Times reported.
“But the original plane was carrying passengers including Secretary of State Marco Rubio … Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was also on that plane, along with Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, and Steven Cheung, the White House communications director.” The Times added that Rubio “had been aware of the threat,” but it was unclear how many of the senior or cabinet-level officials were in the know about their decoy designation.
The Times further reported – and Zeteo can confirm, citing a U.S. official – that at least some of Trump’s staffers aboard Explosion-Decoy Force One were indeed left in the dark. Members of the media traveling with the president were not informed of their expendable status. On Wednesday, the Post scooped that staffers who Trump invited into the catering truck included personal aides Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta, and (um…..) the one and only Natalie Harp. So-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth was also apparently “on the secret flight with Mr. Trump out of Turkey.”
Lucky them!
None of the aircraft were blown out of the sky, by Iranian proxies or anybody else. But now what’s left to see is a secretive Team Trump operation at once perverse and hilarious. It is yet another window into how Trump works from both a policy and personal standpoint. Practically anyone – even those who serve him loyally in the most obsequious and self-debasing manners – can be thrown to the wolves or under the bus at a moment’s notice, as long as Donald J. Trump can sit atop the mess he created, wielding his power and enriching himself.
It’s almost as if President Trump thought so little of two cabinet secretaries and his whining fascist-dork policy architect that he felt okay leaving them on the possible Death Plane, along with the people he deems the most “treasonous” pond scum on the face of the planet: political reporters. And yet Trump couldn’t bring himself to leave behind the young female aide who writes what many, including in Trump’s own White House, derisively snicker about as “love letters” to the president.
Furthermore, in recent months, the White House Correspondents’ Association has bent over backwards trying to appease this criminal, mentally deteriorated president who has repeatedly threatened them with the prospect of prison rape if they don’t snitch out their confidential sources to his DOJ henchmen. The association disgraced itself by practically begging Trump to attend its miserable faux-cotillion dinners, assuring White House staff that the WHCA craved a wholly professional relationship with this West Wing, built on mutual respect and decorum.
President Trump responded to their fair-minded outreach by scurrying away in his escape pod and leaving them on Death Force One.
He and his government did this all without, as past administrations have, informing the traveling press corps that a possible life-or-death scenario was unfolding, so the journalists could make their own decisions.
It is sad and depraved… and also a grimly comic, perfect metaphor for the endlessly abusive relationship between Trump and much of the media that has bafflingly prioritized conducting Business As Usual in a time of anime-Nazi-style degeneracy and gleeful barbarism.
For what it’s worth, President Trump also finds his own incessant amorality extremely funny. A Trump adviser and another person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations, tell me the president and other senior officials have been privately mocking some of the media’s outraged reactions, with several straight-up laughing.
Of course they are. It would be far stranger if they weren’t! It’s a game to them. Team Trump is barely even attempting to hide their collective glee over this.
