Trump Was Secretly Flown Out of Turkey in a Catering Truck Amid Iranian Assassination Threat, Post Reports
Donald Trump was quietly pulled out of Turkey on a military aircraft after a credible assassination threat from Iran, with the older Air Force One used to throw everyone off including his own press pool according to The Washington Post.
The story adds a layer to something reporters had already noticed: Trump left the NATO summit aboard the older, familiar blue-and-white 747 instead of the newly renovated Boeing 747-8 Qatar had gifted him, the same plane he’d flown into Turkey on. At the time, nobody thought much of it.
According to the Post, Trump — who turned 80 in June — boarded the old Air Force One in Ankara in full view of the cameras. Then, out of sight, he was moved to a smaller C-32A after being shuttled across the tarmac inside a catering truck.
The whole point was to keep his real location hidden for a few hours. Journalists on the older plane, and some White House staff too, apparently had no idea he wasn’t with them.
Both aircraft landed in Britain within minutes of each other, so from the outside, it looked like Trump had simply flown in on the plane everyone watched him board.
How it looked from the outside
On camera, the departure looked completely normal. Trump arrived by limousine, walked up the stairs of the old 747, waved, and that was that.
The White House had said beforehand he’d leave on the former Air Force One, and Trump himself posted that he’d skip the newer 747-8 for “old time’s sake” he said it would also give troops stationed in Britain a chance to see the plane up close.
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What nobody mentioned publicly: the Qatari jet had already left Turkey hours earlier that evening, on July 8.
The mechanics of the swap
The switch relied on an ordinary catering truck, the kind used to load food onto planes before takeoff.
Once Trump and a handful of aides were aboard the old Air Force One, the truck pulled up on the far side of the aircraft, out of camera range, and its container was raised hydraulically to door height. That let them slip off the plane unseen.
Footage the Post reviewed shows the truck rolling across the tarmac toward a waiting C-32A — a modified 757 typically used to fly senior officials around. It drops out of frame for a stretch while cameras are pointed elsewhere, then a man in a suit climbs out of the cab and boards the smaller jet.
That C-32A had flown into Turkey alongside the two 747s as part of the standard travel package. It’s usually reserved for the president or vice president, though people know it better under the Air Force Two call sign when the VP is aboard.
Not the first time a decoy’s been used
Swapping planes like this isn’t common, but it isn’t new either.
The Post notes this was a step beyond what the Bush administration did after 9/11 back then, officials just didn’t say where Bush was. They never claimed he was somewhere he wasn’t.
Bill Clinton did something closer to this in Pakistan in 2000. Cameras caught him stepping off a plain white plane that had trailed Air Force One, and it only came out later that the real presidential jet was the decoy.
A former official told the Post this kind of switch has happened a handful of other times over the last thirty years — whenever the threat level was serious enough, or the destination risky enough, to justify it.
Questions about the Qatari plane itself
The Qatar-donated 747-8 has been drawing scrutiny lately over how well-defended it actually is. The Post reports it’s missing some of the countermeasures built into the older Air Force One.
Trump said last month the newer jet would get more upgrades. It had only just entered service after a retrofit that reportedly ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
After the Post’s reporting came out, the White House pushed back on any suggestion the plane isn’t secure. Communications Director Steven Cheung said the aircraft runs “high-level security protocols” built to protect the president and his staff, adding that the administration uses every tool it has given the range of threats Trump faces.