I Flew Trump's Decoy Plane

Right before rolling back from the gate, the catering truck pulled in to the 747 at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport. I watched through the cockpit window as people moved back and forth below. 

I didn’t question the President’s team. In this job, you learn not to. We have burned millions in jet fuel waiting for McDonald’s to be redelivered when he didn’t like the fries.

What I did notice upon takeoff five minutes later was the sudden, almost violent lightness of the aircraft. She practically leapt off the tarmac. I glanced at my flight engineer.

“Did we leave the gold toilet behind?” 

He shook his head and pointed to the top-secret manifest: one Donald J. Trump, 240 pounds of rage and ego, had been removed from the passenger list.

“Fuel burn’s down twelve percent,” my first officer whispered, as if saying it aloud was a federal crime.

Then another thing happened. 

The moment we were wheels up, the mood in the cabin behind the cockpit door changed. Laughter. Actual, unguarded laughter. The kind that comes from people who have realized America’s Final Boss of Narcissists — the man who made them walk on eggshells so carefully they were practically tiptoeing on omelets — was no longer onboard.

A White House correspondent knocked on the cockpit door and handed me a coffee. “Captain,” she said, tears of relief in her eyes, “Marco Rubio just told a joke. An actual jok. Stephen Miller smiled. I didn’t know he had the human capacity for it.”

The sheer relief of not having to nod sagely at 45-minute monologues about crowd sizes had turned the cabin into an airborne Mardi Gras. For twenty minutes, I basked in the warmth of a happy, functional aircraft. The press pool was sharing snacks. Staffers were speaking in complete sentences without looking over their shoulders. Music played. The entire plane spontaneously burst into singing U2’s “Beautiful Day”. 

It was, I thought, the most beautiful flight of my career.

I realized something and looked at my co-pilot. 

“Wait a minute,” I said, the blood draining from my face. “Why are we flying a decoy plane to draw fire away from Trump?”

“Because of the Iranian threat, Captain,” he replied, checking the radar.

“Think about it, Bob!” I yelled. “Why would Iran ever want to eliminate Donald Trump? He is their greatest strategic asset!”

It all clicked. It was exactly like World War II. The Allies literally called off assassination plots against Adolf Hitler because his military decisions were so catastrophically erratic that keeping him alive was the fastest way to win the war. Trump is America’s own biggest geopolitical wildcard. If Iran wanted to destabilize the West, they’d build a statue of him, not shoot down his plane.

“Bob,” I whispered, looking back at the partying staff through the cockpit window. “The Iranians don’t want him. They want the chaperones.”

The real targets weren’t the guy in the catering truck. The target was this plane. A plane packed to the gills with the actual adult advisors, lawyers, and policy aides who spent 24 hours a day pulling Donald Trump back from his absolute worst impulses. If Iran blew them up, Trump would be left entirely to his own devices. The world would descend into chaos within forty-eight hours. We weren’t a shield; we were a flying bullseye.

Right on cue, we crossed into Romanian airspace.

I made my routine position report: “Bucharest Center, Air Force One, flight level 3–5–0.”

The radio crackled. Then a voice came through with a thick Romanian accent.

“Air Force One,” the controller said, his voice trembling, “you are flying over my country. My beautiful country. And I must tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that I hate that orange son of a bitch. May he rot in a goulash of his own lies. Over.”

I keyed the mic. “Uh, Bucharest, roger that. We will pass that along.”

“Tell him I hope his plane flies into a flock of geese and goes down in Moldova! Over!”

“Copy that, Bucharest. Air Force One out.”

My first officer looked at me. “Should we… tell someone?”

“Tell them what? That a guy at Romanian air traffic control doesn’t like Trump?”

But then the fear set in. Romanian air traffic control was in on it.

I grabbed the yoke and changed course toward Greece. “Get me a threat assessment,” I told my comms officer. “Now.”

That’s when my phone rang.

Not the aircraft radio. My mobile phone. The one I put in airplane mode before takeoff. 

I pulled it from my breast pocket. The screen glowed with a number I didn’t recognize, but the caller ID read: “BIBI ❤️”. I answered.

“Captain,” said a voice that sounded like a gravelly lullaby sung by a bulldozer. “This is Benjamin Netanyahu. How is your flight?”

“How are you calling me?” I whispered. “I’m on airplane mode. This is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible for us,” Bibi chuckled. “And, I’ve been listening to everything. The Romanian gentleman with his opinions. What you told your copilot.”

“Then you know we’re — “

“I’m calling to tell you, you have nothing to worry about,” Netanyahu interrupted. “Nothing at all. There is no Iranian threat. Not today.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “What?”

“Let’s just say…” He paused, and I could hear him smiling through the phone. “I was playing a little practical joke on Donald. A reminder. A gentle nudge. You see, he had been ignoring my calls, saying something about ‘America First’ and not needing anyone.”

“You were behind the Iranian assassination threat?”

“I prefer to think of it as a team-building exercise,” Bibi said warmly. “A reminder of how much he needs his Bibi. How the world is a scary place full of hypothetical Iranians who want to hurt him, and only Benjamin Netanyahu can keep him safe.”

“And it worked!” Bibi continued, delighted. “He’s already texted me three times. ‘Bibi, you’re the best.’ ‘Bibi, I miss you.’ ‘Bibi, can you come to Mar-a-Lago?’ It’s beautiful. Like watching a child realize he can’t cross the street alone.”

I looked out at the Romanian countryside below, rolling hills and ancient castles, and I thought about the air traffic controller screaming his hatred into the void. I thought about my passengers, finally relaxing for the first time in years. I thought about the President of the United States, huddled in a catering truck somewhere over the Black Sea, probably eating a ham sandwich and thinking he was a genius.