Trump Sneaked Off Air Force One in a Catering Truck — Here's What Happened
President Donald Trump secretly left Air Force One during a stop in Turkey after US intelligence found a credible Iranian plot to kill him. He left more than a hundred aides, officials, and reporters on the plane to fly toward Britain without telling them about the threat.
The episode was first reported by the Washington Post and the New York Times. It happened as Trump was leaving a NATO summit in Ankara. According to the Washington Post, Trump boarded the older Air Force One jumbo jet in front of cameras, then was secretly driven away in an airport catering truck to a smaller military plane. Air Force One then served as a decoy — a fake target meant to trick anyone trying to attack. Reuters confirmed the catering-truck move, and Fox News reported that staff, Secret Service personnel, and the traveling press stayed on the aircraft. The BBC described the operation as an elaborate trick in response to a possible threat.
The Secret Service had urged Trump to leave Turkey on the older VC-25 rather than the newly retrofitted Qatari-gifted aircraft, according to ABC News. US intelligence assessed that Iran had plotted to kill Trump the previous month. The threat was considered credible enough to trigger the extraordinary countermeasure. The Washington Post reported that the secret flight contradicted public statements about the trip.
Trump spoke about the episode with reporters after returning from an event in Ohio. He said the Secret Service and military wanted him on a different plane due to a threat and that he had little choice in the matter. He said he did not ask much about the threat, adding that he gets a lot of threats. According to the Associated Press via The Guardian, Trump downplayed the extraordinary nature of the trick and the risk to those left on the plane.
The decision to use Air Force One as a decoy while leaving about a hundred people aboard has drawn sharp criticism from former intelligence officials and lawmakers. Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer, said the operation appeared aimed at reducing danger to Trump by offering up around 100 people to be killed in his place. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called the operation "unprecedented, surreal and downright scary" on CNN and demanded a congressional briefing. Democrats more broadly have called for a formal congressional briefing on the episode.
Air Force One is the call sign for any Air Force aircraft carrying the president. It typically carries senior advisors, Secret Service officers, the traveling press pool, and other guests in addition to the president himself, as noted on the White House website. The fact that more than a hundred people stayed on the decoy aircraft without being told of the threat has raised questions about when protecting the president should override the safety of the people working alongside him.
The broader context here is the rising pace of Iranian threats against Trump personally. US intelligence decided the plot was credible enough to warrant abandoning the main presidential aircraft mid-trip, which goes far beyond normal security steps. To picture it: imagine a bodyguard who secretly moves the person he is protecting out of a building, but leaves a hundred other people inside as a distraction without telling them. The decision to keep passengers uninformed while using their presence as part of the trick sits at an uncomfortable intersection of operational security — keeping sensitive details hidden to protect a mission — and institutional transparency.
Whether Congress will get the briefing Democrats are demanding, and what additional safety steps may follow, are open questions. The episode has already exposed a gap between the Secret Service's protective logic and the expectations of those who routinely fly aboard the presidential aircraft under the assumption that they share the president's security protection.
