Instadocs: The Decoy Plane (2026)

[bunniefuu]

President Trump leaves for

Turkey tonight for the annual NATO summit.

President Trump will board

the new Qatar-supplied Air Force One,

an unconditional 400-million-dollar gift

from a foreign government.

Mr. Trump unveiled the new jet last month,

calling it, "The world's

most luxurious plane."

My job is to document

the president for the world.

Those pictures

are sent immediately,

because, God forbid

something happens to the president,

that's gonna be the last imagery

that the world sees of him.

The press pool is a group of journalists,

a dozen or 13 people

that follow the president around,

will be on Air Force One.

You're absolutely the eyes and ears

of the public as the press pool.

But in my more than 40-year career,

I've never been put

in the position of being a decoy.

Wild. Just wild.

We are learning of an elaborate ruse

to protect President Trump

from an assassination threat.

This is an extraordinary,

extraordinary story.

He got onto the plane and vanishes.

This is a real shell game of sorts,

moving from place-to-place

without anybody knowing.

You have to think like the bad guy

to do a good job in the Secret Service.

They will do anything

for the safety of the president.

You gotta hear this. This is totally nuts.

Huh?

This is a story that sounds like

it's just completely out of a movie.

They all sound like Hollywood.

This sounds like something

out of a James Bond film.

Were you worried about

a shoulder-fired m*ssile?

I don't worry about anything,

to be honest.

Whatever it is.

You know my attitude? Whatever.

.

The NATO summit

is one of these sort of set pieces.

We know this is going to happen.

The U.S. president has always gone.

We land and immediately go to work.

We're not going to the hotel

to take a nappy poo.

We're working.

He's got a meeting with Zelensky.

He's got a bilateral meeting

with the head of NATO.

And I'm not happy with NATO,

because of the fact

that they didn't wanna help us

with the number one

state sponsor of terror. That's Iran.

There was some saber rattling

between the U.S. and Iran.

And of course, they're dirty players,

so, they go after everyone,

probably including me.

I've been number one

on their list for years.

And they're a bunch of scum.

You wanna know the truth? They're scum.

The underlying issue

in all of this is the Iran w*r.

For the second straight day,

the U.S. and Iran

traded overnight strikes,

raising concerns about

the possibility of a return

to a full-scale military conflict.

This is a serious escalation.

It's fair to say that

the Iran w*r has not progressed

as the White House would have liked.

Iran is in a position

to make the president

take very, very extraordinary

security measures

when we're almost six months

into this w*r.

That's an issue

for the White House. They don't like it.

Turkey being relatively close to Iran,

where we're having difficulties

with that country now,

certainly heightens the situation.

So it's all about preparation.

And we're probably the only agency

that plans and plans and plans and plans

and hopes we never

have to do what we plan to do.

The president's vehicles

get flown to that location.

Secret Service support staff

get flown to that location.

We're gonna know

where our safe spaces are,

what's our route back to the limousine.

If a fire alarm goes off,

what are we gonna do?

If somebody comes

through the door with a weapon,

what are we gonna do?

The Secret Service's primary mission

is for the person it's protecting,

or persons it's protecting

on a particular visit.

We're there to protect our president.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the 45th and 47th president

of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

President Trump,

towards the end of the NATO conference,

says on Truth Social

that he's not going to be flying back

on the Qatari Air Force One.

He's going to be flying back

on the old Air Force One.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

But why aren't you flying

the new plane home?

Say what?

Why aren't you flying

on the new Air Force One home?

It's flying to Europe,

to one of the big bases,

two or three of the big bases,

where we can show it to the people.

At the time,

the main hypothesis was simply

that the White House

had changed the planes

for security issues

because they didn't want to admit

that the new plane

was not up to snuff security-wise.

I mean, the circling helicopter now,

I'm just interested, like, why?

My husband thinks

I'm the weirdest person in the world.

We'll be at a picnic, and I'm like,

"I need to find out

if that's a decoy or the real thing."

The president himself put himself

in greater jeopardy

by insisting on flying

this Qatari gift plane.

As Secret Service sources told me,

the president was incredibly embarrassed

that his Qatari gift jet,

which he'd been bragging about,

was not as safe

as the old and less plush Air Force One.

The old Air Force One

has much more serious abilities

to avoid any kind of m*ssile.

Its ability to defend itself

from that kind of attack is unmatched.

But no president is a bigger target

for assassination than Donald Trump.

Get down, get down, get down, get down.

Shots have apparently been fired.

Donald Trump has been injured.

Investigation underway

after the second assassination attempt

on former president

g*nshots were fired

at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

We are getting reports now

that several shots were fired

near the White House.

where a man tried to

assassinate him while he played golf.

And Iran has been trying openly

to k*ll Donald Trump since January, 2020.

Overnight, we learned that

President Trump ordered the drone strike

that k*lled Iranian general

Qasem Soleimani,

one of the most powerful men

in the region.

Iranians today poured

into the streets of Tehran to honor

their Ayatollah

and Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei,

assassinated by the U.S.

at the start of the w*r.

Iran has been very clear.

They want to avenge that

by k*lling Donald Trump.

Not only was he now authorizing

new strikes on Iran during this trip,

but Israel's intelligence agency

is passing along

this really scary information,

suggesting that there's an active plot

to try to hit Air Force One

and bring it down,

or damage it in some way.

It is a perfect storm

for something going horribly wrong.

And the Secret Service,

I'm told by sources, was struggling.

"How do we get this guy home safely?"

As we get on the tarmac,

and move round,

and I look at Air Force One,

I see those catering vehicles

up against the side of Air Force One.

There's one at the front

and one at the back.

And I have never seen that before.

Forty years doing presidents,

never seen that before.

I shot it. I shot the sh*t out of it.

We get out.

I may be the first

or second person out of the bus.

And the president's already up the stairs.

Trump enters the plane,

we rush in, we sit down.

We get on the plane.

Don't really think anything more of it.

The second unusual thing happens.

We're told by the White House staff

that we should lower our window shades.

I'm like, "Why?"

They said, "Secret Service says to."

I'm like, "Okay."

Close it.

My little spidey sense is up now.

I don't know why this is happening.

And I'm on high alert.

I remember working

in this galley when I first got started.

You'd be amazed

what we could do in these little galleys.

The dishes still look the same.

I served in the United States Air Force

for 28 years

And 20 of those years,

I was an Air Force One flight attendant.

I started flying with President Bush,

"Daddy Bush," we call him, 41.

Then I flew with President Clinton

and President Bush, 43.

I ended with President Obama.

Everyone has a seating card.

You put their name on the seating card

and a menu card, so they know the meals,

and of course,

the fruit bowls and candy dishes.

The flight attendants,

a lot of people don't believe this,

but we go grocery shopping.

We will shop in civilian attire,

so we won't get the attention

that we're here

to shop for the president.

We buy all the groceries

because of our background clearance.

That's part of our safety checklist

to make sure that we handled it.

I didn't receive it from somebody else.

I brought it on board,

so that's a big part of it.

So, it's secure to the max,

you know, maximum security.

Prior to departure,

the flight attendants

will upload the plane.

We have refrigerators

and freezers in the belly.

Well, we could go self-contained

for about 14 days with food.

So there would be no

reason for a catering cart

or anything like that to be near

Air Force One.

Exactly. No catering, no trucks

of any sort should be coming

towards the airplane

as far as delivering food

'cause we should have enough, like I said,

to take us throughout the whole trip.

A total of 24 years.

I would say maybe,

a handful of times during a debrief,

I was told that we had

some type of threat against us.

Could have been something

about the president,

or it could have been about the crew,

or just take the whole plane down.

But that was told after the fact,

and I'm glad.

I didn't know that while I was in the air

that we had an attack on us.

Most of that,

those things are classified.

So, we arrive

at Mildenhall Air Force Base.

It's the evening.

At this point, it's dark.

And the other Air Force One,

the Qatari Air Force One

that we had used to fly

from D.C. to Turkey

was parked several hundred yards

in front of us.

We are taken off the plane,

and we see Trump walk down

from the old Air Force One.

We photograph him coming down the steps.

And he walks between the two aircraft.

It had this kind of cinematic quality.

And that is

that's totally Trump, you know?

He really does think about,

"How is this gonna play?"

"How do I look," you know?

Mr. President, will you

come over and take some questions?

And he stops by the Qatari jet,

and says a few words.

You know, got pictures of him

stopped by the Qatari jet.

He goes up the steps,

then we get back

on the Qatari jet and off we go.

Shortly thereafter,

President Trump does come to the cabin.

It's a long walk to you.

Hi, Mr. President.

It's about three times the walk

we used to take,

but I hope you like it. So

And then we immediately start

spraying him with questions.

What was the security concern

that caused us to change planes?

We just wanted to confirm

that they switched the planes,

because of a security threat.

Do you think

there wasn't a security concern?

No, no. Why would there be?

At that point, he was denying everything,

denying everything.

Do you know why

they had us close our window blinds?

-That was--

-No.

Well, yeah, because you're

you know, probably on a dangerous flight,

because of the sleazebags

that we have to deal with.

Do you think that

Iran was possibly thinking

Well, I mean,

if they asked you to close your windows,

probably they'd feel that way.

They didn't ask me to close mine,

but if they did, I would have done it.

You know, these are sick people.

So, I could see something like that.

I didn't know they did that,

but I could see something like that.

Were you aware of any credible

threat by Iran against Air Force One?

I have a threat all the time.

I'm number one on their list before you.

But if I go, you go, right?

In the past, there have been

several operations with presidents

where there has been some deception,

or non-transparency.

President Clinton had an issue

in Pakistan a number of years ago.

One jet landed at the Air Force base here,

and it appeared it carried the president,

but it turned out it was a decoy.

Mr. Clinton landed moments later

on an unmarked military jet.

-This is wild.

-This is totally wild, man.

President Bush had a situation

where he went to a military theater

on Thanksgiving Day.

I happened to be,

about to have dinner, and my wife said,

"Hey, the president's in Iraq

having Thanksgiving dinner."

I didn't even know.

The agents at

the president's ranch didn't know.

He was surreptitiously taken out

to keep that story hush-hush.

Does this level of deception

or non-transparency happen every day,

that level of it? No.

But a decision was made

to meet the need of the situation

on the ground at the moment.

Now, there are people

that are gonna be asking questions.

That's up to the press now

to go do their job

and ask those hard questions.

I covered national security

for The Washington Post,

covered the military in particular

for almost 18 years.

Access has dwindled

really throughout the entire 18 years,

but dramatically through

this second Trump administration.

They are trying to control message,

so it makes covering

the day-to-day news more challenging.

On the other hand,

a lot of times you can break through

with a story, you know,

even if it's days or weeks old,

nobody knows about it.

So, in July, we got this initial tip.

And I'm going to be vague deliberately

to protect sourcing there.

But the initial tip was that basically

the reporting for days had been wrong.

There have been so many questions

about why the president is not flying home

on his new Air Force One.

He's departing on the previous

Air Force One, the old one.

You know, and basically what

the White House was saying

He wanted to show

the new aircraft to U.S. troops.

And also, what the media was saying.

All of this reporting around

why they took the older plane,

only for it to be neither plane.

And it was the third plane

that made the story very unusual.

Tip comes in that, in Turkey,

the president got onto

the old Air Force One,

and then very quickly and secretly

gets off the plane on the opposite side

and into this airport catering truck

without anybody knowing,

despite numerous television cameras,

numerous reporters.

So, for this tip to be true,

there's a whole lot of people

that had to have missed it in the moment.

It was not a trip I was on,

but there's publicly available video

from the flight line in Turkey.

So, we see video of the president

walking up the steps in Turkey

onto the old Air Force One.

And when you look at the video

through the lens of,

"Hey, let's keep an eye

on that catering truck,"

you can see the catering truck

on the far side of the old Air Force One

plain as day.

You can see the press corps arriving,

walking up to the tail of the plane,

and in the moment,

they also had been asked

to pull down the window shades

on the plane.

No real, solid explanation why.

The blinds, I forgot the blinds.

The shades down on the plane.

So, the shades.

It turns out, almost certainly,

that this was to hide the catering van.

'Cause the catering van

was on the same side

that we were told to close.

And then as the press starts

to make moves to get on the plane,

you see the catering truck pull away.

Holy sh*t. Those catering trucks.

Holy sh*t. All those little things add up.

When the catering truck pulled away

from Air Force One on video,

our reporting holds

that he was inside the truck

with a handful of loyal aides.

You can see the catering truck move

to the smaller plane behind the plane.

And that turned out to be the third plane?

And that was the third plane.

It was a C-32,

which was also part of this initial tip.

The C-32 looks relatively nondescript.

It is a smaller plane,

significantly smaller.

It's also blue and white.

It's also got "United States of America"

down the side.

The understanding was that

the defense secretary,

Pete Hegseth,

it was his plane, if you will.

He got on the plane publicly,

took the external stairs,

so you can kind of see him

get on the plane.

With the president getting on,

you know, kind of secretly,

through this other door,

under cover of this truck.

And it's like, okay,

well, your sourcing here.

It appears they know

what they're talking about.

This all holds up,

and we had tracker data

for multiple planes.

The tracker data shows that

the old legacy Air Force One

popped up with the Air Force One call sign

over Istanbul.

And then the other plane didn't appear.

The C-32 with the president aboard

did not appear on tracker data

the way all the other planes did that day.

So, then you're asking,

"Why didn't they turn transponders on?"

It's a deception operation is what

the Pentagon would call it.

And there was actual video

of the plane landing in Britain

because there were plane spotters

on the ground

who had posted all the video on YouTube.

The one that kind of stuck out

was the one that didn't appear

on the tracking data.

But you could see it land in sequence

with the same other planes that took off.

C-32? Well that doesn't make sense

They noted it in the moment.

There were social media posts

in the moment saying,

"Hey, this is unusual."

It landed nine minutes apart

with the one labeled Air Force One.

At that point, it's like, it all tracks.

It all made sense.

And then, you know,

you find the additional sourcing

that can verify it to standard,

multiple sources with,

you know, overlapping details.

And it's like, yeah, we got this.

This is true.

Breaking news. The Washington Post

just crossing some new reporting.

President Trump's secret plane swap.

Well, it's certainly in the running

for scoop of the year.

How many people do you think

were aware of this ruse?

I had my feet up and a beer in my hand.

And I was like, "Oh, no. Here we go."

And I knew that

this was gonna be a big deal.

This is an astonishing story

of secrecy and deception.

He let the press fly as a decoy.

Were they just sitting ducks

for this potential threat?

We were used as decoys.

Wild. Just wild.

What first struck me when I read

The Washington Post story was that

I saw him get off the plane

he wasn't supposed to be on.

That's one variable

that we have not solved for,

despite being able to confirm

the rest of the story.

Somehow, he snuck back onto that plane

just to get off in front of us,

which was pretty advanced choreography.

One thing that caught my attention

in the moment

is the president spoke to the media

and his comment that, "If I go, you go."

But if I go, you go.

Basically, the idea that he's presenting

as the truth, that, like,

they're all together,

and if something happens to him,

something happens to the rest of 'em.

And we know now

that simply isn't the case.

-Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone.

-Thank you, Mr. President.

Part of the story

is they had legitimate fears

for the president's life.

There was no dispute over that from us.

It was more,

you took these very unusual steps.

You hid them.

Please explain why.

They denied nothing.

They responded initially

with a "no comment".

And then the President,

a full day later, addressed it briefly.

President, can you tell us about your ride

on the airport catering truck in Turkey?

Why did you need to do that?

It's totally up to the Secret Service.

I just follow what they'd like to do.

What was the nature of the threat?

There was a threat out there.

I didn't really ask too much about it.

I get a lot of threats.

We didn't have it in the initial story,

but we did have it a day or so later.

Who was on the catering truck?

Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent,

they remained on the legacy Air Force One.

No cabinet officials, no general officers,

but instead, Natalie Harp

and a handful of kind of nondescript aides

that the American public

probably wouldn't really know.

The president did take

his secretary of defense.

Did Secret Service decide

who would accompany the president?

Democrats want answers.

What precautions were taken

to keep the staff

and reporters on that plane safe?

I'm all for getting out of the way

if something's about to pop up.

This Washington Post scoop is crazy.

It's been surreal watching

the aftermath with memes,

late night television.

Just to clarify, he was not

in a actual airport cart, right?

Like, what you would have

the drinks inside,

small, but actually in the truck itself.

Everybody's going crazy over this.

Yeah, you know, and I don't know why.

Nobody cares if a plane full of press

falls out of the sky.

They're just fools.

They don't know how it works.

They don't care how it works.

All they wanna do

is bash Trump all day, every day.

Now, I understand that they feel duped,

but this idea that the Secret Service

was there to protect them,

I think they need to get over themselves.

Come on up. Come on up. It's okay.

That's the White House. Can you see it?

The White House is where the crane is.

That's where the White House is.

What are they building?

He's making a helipad

to land the helicopter.

Hang on. Hang on. I can see him.

He's gonna walk out.

-Who?

-The president.

He's gonna walk out right now.

Yep.

So, see the guy standing right there?

That's the president.

That's the president.

I've done lots of difficult things,

pretty dangerous things

in pursuit of my job

and in pursuit of a really good picture.

Be it embedding with troops

in Afghanistan,

be it wing walking, be it Mount Everest.

But my belief is that

it's nice to know that going in.

That you can say,

sure, I'm willing to take that risk

to show the world what's going on there.

As journalists,

we're used to taking risks.

There's a lot of colleagues that put

their lives on the line for stories.

Had they told me

that this plane was a decoy,

I wouldn't have changed it at all.

One reason that this is more significant

than it even might seem is because

if you're a journalist in D.C.,

it's sort of the latest step

of many aimed at limiting transparency

and information.

So, I think that's one reason

why it ended up hitting a nerve.

You know, if we're not being told

the truth about this,

what else are we not being told

the truth about?

The Secret Service is not in

the public relations business

of making everybody feel good.

The Secret Service's job

was to get the president home

that night from that visit.

And quite frankly,

the bottom line here was

that everybody on those other two planes

got home that night safely too.

So, from a Secret Service standpoint,

that was a very successful day.

Clearly, there are still threats.

Clearly, Iran can still be perceived

as a threat,

or you wouldn't take these steps.

It, I think, has become a bit of a symbol

about the degree to which

this w*r has gotten to a place

that the White House has not wanted

or did not anticipate.

Being in a catering van

due to threats from Iran

does not project power,

does not project control.

And, you know, they know that.

We don't yet have a full understanding

for what exactly the threat was.

How exactly

that intelligence manifested.

What were the other options on the table

in terms of disclosing or not?

Those are all things that we don't have

a picture at this time.

There's gonna be a lot of unknowns,

and I don't think we're ever

gonna know everything.

I think the rest of it are questions

for the White House to answer.