Leaving on a Jet Plane. Don’t Care If I See You Again!

I always assumed traveling with the President came with certain perks.

Motorcades. Air Force One. Excellent security and the comforting belief that if there were a credible assassination threat, your plane would not be the decoy.

Apparently, that last one is not guaranteed.

After intelligence warned of a possible Iranian threat against Donald Trump as he left Turkey, an elaborate security operation swung into action.

Trump publicly boarded Air Force One, then quietly slipped off, traveled across the airport in a catering truck (Incredible irony. He probably snacked his way across the tarmac) and boarded another military aircraft.

Air Force One took off without him.

Still aboard?

Members of the press corps. Military pilots. Marco Rubio. Scott Bessent. Stephen Miller. The White House staff.

Nothing says united team quite like, “Possible assassination plot. You guys take the large, easily recognizable presidential airplane. I’ll catch another flight.”

Trump, meanwhile, departed with a much smaller group, including Pete Hegseth, valet Waltine Torre Nauta Jr., director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, Dan Scavino and Natalie Harp, the blonde human printer who follows him around armed with enough paper to deforest a small Scandinavian country.

Wouldn’t America be great again having a human printer, valet, former golf club manager and alcoholic spousal abuser and aggressive womanizer running the country?

But I digress.

Imagine being Marco Rubio.

You buckle your seatbelt, settle in, perhaps order a Cuban Rum and Diet Coke and suddenly wonder, Has anyone seen Donald?

No?

And Pete?

Also no?

OMG, where is the valet?

Interesting.

To be fair, the Secret Service is supposed to protect the president, and deception is a perfectly legitimate security tactic, but the optics are irresistibly tacky and self centered.

Save the President. Save the human printer. Protect the valet. Leave the Secretary of State on the decoy.

And the press?

I assume Fake News peeps are expendable.

Congratulations.

Always maligned and the reporters reward could have been sacrificing their bodies for no good reason.

Leaving on a jet plane.

Don’t know if or when I’ll be back again.

Sadly, he will be back because he was on the other plane and just like a cockroach whose bodies, biology, and habits make them master survivors, he just will not be squashed.