CSotD: POTUS a la Carte (ou Camionnette)
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Cartoonists have leapt on the story of Donald Trump being sneaked off of Air Force One onto a different plane to fly from Ankara to London because of a rumored Iranian assassination plot. We’ll delay Humpday for 24 hours to look at some of the best commentary, but keep your eyes open, because there’s more out there already and no doubt some more cartoonists will drop their reactions in the next day or two.
Whamond recalls the grandiose gesture from Butler, in which Trump celebrated an assassination attempt with such bravado that it sparked conspiracy theories suggesting the incident had been staged. It may be that the Secret Service spoke to him about how that might have played out if there’d been a second shooter, because when a would-be assassin attempted to crash the WHCA dinner, he kept his head down and cooperated with the agents trying to get him off-stage.
Juxtaposition of the Day
One of the disadvantages of responding quickly is that the initial report of the switch made it seem that the president had been taken off Air Force One in a food cart rather than a catering van, which figured in Whamond’s cartoon and may have been an advantage in that it suggested such an absurd scenario that Blitt and Telnaes were inspired to come up with other ways in which Dear Leader could be secretly transported in the future.
For those who missed the play-by-play, Trump very publicly boarded Air Force One — the old one, not the Qatari baksheesh — but then exited on the other side of the plane into the food truck which had been lifted to the doorway there, which is standard practice for servicing passenger jets.
This still allowed Rowe to depict him as a glutton and to mock his odd fixation on NBC correspondent Kaitlin Collins.
The confusion over the presidential hiding place didn’t stop Stahler from making a pointed remark about the impression created by the diversion. It will be interesting to watch the commentary that emerges in the days to come, because Stahler seems right that all the cloak-and-dagger maneuvering does not paint a picture of confidence, particularly since the president has repeatedly bragged about having destroyed the Iranian air force and navy and all but ended their ability to strike back, despite Iranian attacks on ships in the Gulf and on American and allied bases in neighboring countries.
However, even before the era of drone warfare began, shoulder-fired missiles made one-man warfare possible: We armed Afghan irregulars with them during the Soviet occupation of that country, which was 46 years ago, and the technology has not stood still in the years since.
Whether in a cart or in a van, there is good reason to take threats seriously, though Loper enjoys the absurdity of having Men in Black escorting a food cart in which a dozing president lurks.
And Bennett cuts to the chase and accuses Trump of cowardice. Certainly, Dear Leader would have a stronger argument for discretion if he hadn’t cheated to avoid service in Vietnam, but taking out leaders is an established tactic in war.
In our own Revolution, an American sniper killed General Simon Fraser at Saratoga, and in the War of 1812, one eliminated Major John Whitaker, while Lord Nelson fell to a French sniper at Trafalgar. At that time, deliberately targeting leaders was considered questionable, but it has since become standard, and Trump himself bragged about our having killed Iran’s head of state, posting
This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Questions are, however, being asked about leaving journalists and White House staff in Air Force One, unaware of the threat and of the fact that the president had secretly deplaned, leaving them aboard, hence the target Heller paints on it.
The strategy is not entirely new. Susan Page of USA Today filed a story yesterday about a time in 2000 when President Clinton flew from India to Pakistan in a plane that followed Air Force One, and referred to it as a “decoy,” when, of course, the decoy was the plane he was expected to be on.
It does make an interesting “what if” to ponder how things would go if a planeload of reporters and government staff were to be shot down, and the president then stepped off of a different plane, hale and hearty. Deering suggests that “Thoughts and prayers” would hardly cover the matter.
In the essay accompanying his cartoon, Jones enumerates a number of other times that presidents have taken unmarked planes for the sake of safety, and admits that such subterfuges make sense when threats are anticipated.
However, he points out a crucial difference:
The difference between these presidents’ secret trips and Trump’s is that the journalists who were on board the flights were informed beforehand that they were potentially in danger. Trump, on the other hand, never told the reporters or even White House staffers on the plane, and they only found out from reporting by the Washington Post a month later.
It’s an interesting distinction, but is it an important one?
First of all, Jones assumes that Trump had some agency in the matter, though he himself has said he was just doing whatever security told him to, and, as noted above, he may have become more submissive since that “Fight! Fight! Fight!” business in Butler.
Second, what do you do with all those people? You can’t just leave them there on the tarmac to find their way home, and if you put them on a fourth plane, it’s as likely as any of the other three to be picked out as a target. And giving them a choice would be an extraordinary breach of security; you can’t leave someone behind who knows what’s going on.
I don’t have an answer, except that he shouldn’t make a habit out of doing this sort of thing.
OTOH, he should have learned by now …
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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