RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Gizmodo — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
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We already knew something weird happened with Donald Trump last month in Turkey, even by the already weird standards of this administration. He ordered new military strikes against Iran while in Turkey for a NATO summit —meaning he was unusually close to the fireworks he was creating. Then, when he left Turkey for the U.K., the official story was cagey and self-contradictory , and involved him supposedly flying on an older Air Force One-designated plane, instead of his brand new, more luxurious Air Force One.
However, it's now being reported that the president flew to the U.K. not on the new Air Force One nor one of the Old Air Force Ones, but that he got on one of the old planes and posed for the press like everything was normal, and then slipped out a cargo door and into a catering box, which got carted off to a military plane, which he then flew aboard all the way to the U.K.
The Washington Post first reported this on Monday, and the New York Times corroborated it on Tuesday . Yes, Trump was apparently conveyed in a dang food container according to credible reporting . In video footage published by the Times, the box had the logo of Austrian catering company Do & Co on it, and was detached and lowered onto a truck with a scissor lift, as is common with such containers according to the official Do & Co website .
Video shows the airport catering truck used in a secret operation to move President Trump from Air Force One to another U.S. government plane amid a credible Iranian threat last month.
The truck can be seen pulling away from Air Force One after the president had boarded the… pic.twitter.com/IwJTaWlmSb
Before the report about the catering box, I had recently written about Trump's new , Qatar-gifted Air Force One. Even though the defensive capabilities of Air Force One are top secret, aviation aficionados are fairly certain the new plane was not beefed up with the sort of anti-missile capabilities the president's older planes had boasted. For Trump to scurry off to the relatively safety of an older plane as soon as Iran posed a potential threat made sense as far as I was concerned.
But in light of what we now know, this story does not fully make sense when you dig into the details, and as such I have some questions:
Out of many Veep -like aspects to this story, perhaps the Veepiest is this: according to the New York Times, there were reporters and White House staffers on the older Air Force One plane that day, and they allegedly believed Trump was actually onboard when it took off. This, the Times says, was part of the "ruse," and the people on the plane were there "to serve as unknowing decoys." The BBC reported at the time that passengers were asked to keep the window shades closed during the flight .
To spell this out a little bit more, if the Times' reporting is accurate, the ruse could have involved smuggling Trump out of the plane, and then keeping it stationary on the runway—say, due to some fake technical difficulties—while Trump secretly slipped into the U.K., and then announced the switcheroo immediately after he landed. Instead, amid what was reportedly a credible—and presumably mortal—threat, am I to understand that his administration decided to have a plane full of suckers take off and fly almost 2,000 miles across Europe with, essentially, a big "Donald Trump is inside this plane" sign on it?
Even at the time, this move was confusing in part because it seemed like the administration was jerking the public around. Trump himself said he was flying on the obsolete plane "for old time's sake." However, when he switched back to Air Force One—the new one—at Mildenhall Air Force Base in the U.K., he posted on Truth Social that the brave heroes over at Mildenhall "should be the first" to see the new Air Force One.
“To honor our brave men and women of the Military, we are sending the brand new, and truly spectacular, Air Force One to Mildenhall Air Force Base, in the United Kingdom, to give them a chance to tour the Aircraft…” – President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Nf2qCGDKUs
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 8, 2026
With no disrespect whatsoever intended for the military personnel at Mildenhall Air Force Base, which is actually a U.K. air force installation that the U.S. and NATO use for refueling , there are a lot of US Air Force bases in Europe —including one very big and important one, Ramstein —so why in the world would these specific people either care, or deserve any such privilege?
But that's just one weird hole in the official story from last month, because…
In the newly reported sequence of events, Trump's secret military plane allegedly landed in Mildenhall separately from the old Air Force One plane. Trump was then allegedly smuggled into that Air Force One, and then photographed leaving it, only to eventually depart from Mildenhall in plane number 3: his new, Qatar-gifted Air Force One. That plan has a ton of moving parts! The most sense I can make of it is that the Trump Administration was hoping to discourage Iran from attempting a missile strike by pretending the president was aboard the more defensively robust, older plane.
But keep in mind that Trump has claimed that the new Air Force One is "considered the world’s most luxurious plane,” and said, “When it was built, it was built at a level that will probably never be seen again.” Even if he weren't in it, would Donald Trump, who once lived in the world's gaudiest apartment , be willing to risk letting Iran blow up such a plane? Better, perhaps, to pretend to be on a less luxurious plane, and get that one blown up instead.
In response to questions from the New York Times about the plane swap back on July 8, Trump's communications director, Steven Cheung, gave statements that sounded downright idiotic when all anyone thought had happened was that the president had switched to an older plane. Here's what the Times published, emphasis Gizmodo's:
"[T]he new Air Force One is a s...
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