I laughed
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
That was a crappy thing to do to the staff and reporters.
Complain to the USSC, sweety-paws. I'm pretty sure that people who choose to be on AF One know the risks.
I heard they weren't told about the threat and only learned about it when they landed, crumb cake.
That's right. That's SOP.
If you fly on AF One and need someone to tell you there's an inherent risk . . .
This was a deception/protective operation of a type used before (e.g., a rClinton-era precedent with an unmarked jet and decoy Air Force One).
I don't recall you whining when that happened.
Presidents are the primary protectee; contingency plans routinely prioritize extracting the president.
I'm not saying trump shouldn't have gotten on a decoy plane. I'm asking why were the others not allowed?
Is that so?
I had to convince Grok that you were serious. It took a while.
The reason the others on the legacy Air Force One were not told about the threat and evacuated is that doing so would have defeated the entire purpose of the operation.
This was a deception operation, not a routine security upgrade.
The goal was to make any potential attackers believe the president was still on that plane.
For the decoy to work:
- The plane had to look and behave like a normal presidential flight (call sign, schedule, passenger load, visible activity).
- The switch had to stay secret in real time. Telling a large group of people — press pool + staff + others — creates an immediate risk of leaks, chatter, phone activity, or visible changes that could tip off adversaries watching the airport or monitoring communications.
- Emptying or partially emptying the plane would have been an obvious signal that something was wrong. An aircraft that suddenly unloads most of its passengers or sits empty while a smaller jet departs nearby would undermine the ruse.
Presidential protection doctrine treats the president as the primary protectee. Contingency plans are built around extracting the principal first and maintaining operational security. That is standard, not unique to this administration. The same logic applied in the well-documented 2000 Clinton Pakistan arrival, where a decoy aircraft was used and only limited prior notification was given to press leadership — not a full public evacuation of everyone else.
There are also practical constraints at a foreign airport under a credible threat assessment: suddenly evacuating dozens of people, arranging alternative secure transport for them, and doing it without broadcasting the change is far more complicated and time-sensitive than moving one principal and a small trusted group via a catering truck.
In short: They weren’t told and evacuated because the deception required the plane to continue looking occupied and routine. Informing and removing everyone would have made the decoy useless. That is why the operation was structured the way it was.
It's posts like this that confirm that Grok really doesn't have a brain. This was the best they could come up with?
And another view: “It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place,” said Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch."
Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, called the operation “unprecedented and surreal” and “downright scary” on CNN: “There has to be a congressional briefing because it involves not just the safety of the president.
“I want to know what precautions were taken to make sure that all of the passengers on that Air Force One, which was judged too dangerous for the president to fly on, what precautions were taken to keep the staff and reporters on that plane safe?”
trump's Air Force One Ankara decoy flight put top officials at deadly risk
Rubio, Bessent took decoy Air Force One, Hegseth flew on secret flight with Trump
The criticism misses the distinction between the factual sequence and the political framing of it.
My earlier answer accurately described what the reporting (primarily Washington Post, corroborated by New York Times and others citing U.S. officials and reviewed material) said happened: Trump publicly boarded the legacy Air Force One, then was moved via the standard elevated catering truck/container on the far side of the aircraft to a C-32A that flew him out under a nondescript call sign, while the 747 with press and some staff acted as the visible decoy. That is not “hiding in a crate.” Calling it a crate is the forum’s rhetorical downgrade; the vehicle is a large hydraulic catering truck routinely used at airports to service aircraft doors.
On the “human shields / offering up 100 people” characterization
Steven Cash’s quote frames the decoy as deliberately sacrificing the passengers. That is one interpretation, not the operational description in the reporting. Decoy aircraft and diversionary movements are longstanding protective techniques (Clinton used a similar Air Force One decoy into Pakistan in 2000). The press and staff were already scheduled to travel on that plane; the ruse was that the president was not on it after the public boarding. Intelligence indicated a threat tied to the president or his aircraft amid the Iran hostilities. The Secret Service and military judged the switch reduced the primary risk. Whether that calculation was correct, proportionate, or adequately protective of the other passengers is a legitimate question—exactly the one Blumenthal raised.
Blumenthal’s points are fair process questions:
- Was the threat specific enough that the 747 itself was judged too dangerous for the president but still acceptable for the others?
- What additional protective measures (fighter escort, route changes, electronic countermeasures, etc.) were applied to the decoy flight?
- Why was the traveling press and staff not informed?
Those are oversight issues. They do not rewrite the mechanics of the transfer itself. The operation was unusual in its specifics (catering truck transfer + press left unaware), which is why multiple outlets described it as extraordinary or “surreal.” It is not unprecedented in the broader history of presidential movement under threat.
Bottom
The forum title “Trump hid in a crate” remains a caricature. The accurate characterization is a deliberate plane-swap deception using a catering truck as the transfer vehicle, prompted by an Iranian-linked threat assessment, with the legacy Air Force One serving as the public decoy. Critics can (and do) attack the wisdom, the risk allocation, the secrecy from the press pool, or the optics. That critique is separate from whether the reported sequence of events is being described accurately. The sequence is.
