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President Donald Trump’s reported covert departure from Turkey aboard an aircraft other than Air Force One has triggered a wave of AI-generated memes and jokes online.
On July 8, following a NATO summit in Turkey, the Republican president quietly left the country on a military aircraft, even as the White House maintained that he was traveling aboard Air Force One, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The operation, reportedly prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, began with the 80-year-old president boarding the older Air Force One in Ankara in full view of cameras. He was later moved in secret to a smaller plane via “an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies,” according to the Post, citing people familiar with the matter. The original Air Force One, still carrying reporters and some administration staffers, served as a “decoy.”
“As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats,” a White House spokesperson told the outlet, while defending the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, which reportedly lacks the necessary security measures.
The elaborate maneuver, also reported by The New York Times, quickly became fodder for social media users, who imagined the president squeezed into everything from a catering cart to a laundry bin.
Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, posted what appeared to be an AI-generated image of Trump lying inside a metal cart on the tarmac beside cartons of McDonald’s fries and bottles of Diet Coke.
“EXCLUSIVE. Meidas has obtained footage of Trump hiding in the catering truck while switching planes,” he jokingly wrote on X.
Another user shared an image of a flight attendant pushing a service cart down the aisle of a packed plane, with Trump seated inside.
Elsewhere, a parody account calling itself the Associated Fress posted an image of the GOP president poking his head out of a McDonald’s truck parked beside Air Force One — an apparent reference to the viral image of Trump working the drive-thru at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s during the 2024 campaign.
Another AI-generated meme showed the president being whisked away from Air Force One in a laundry cart, his head emerging from a heap of towels.
A left-leaning account repurposed imagery from Jaws, riffing on the film’s famous tagline with: “We’re gonna need a bigger catering cart!”
Yet another meme depicted a catering truck painted in Air Force One’s color scheme and bearing the presidential seal. “American coward-n-chief, Donald Trump, sneaks out of Turkey aboard Food Truck One,” the caption read.
Another X account posted a clip of the HBO show House of the Dragon, depicting King Aegon Targaryen shouting “I’m alive!” alongside the caption: “Trump watching air force 1 get shot down with all the journalist[s] he hates on board.”
