Profile in cowardice: Trump was happy to put everyone else at risk so long as he was safe

He's not the first president to sneak out of town, but the most dishonest and dangerous

By J.C. Bruce

Tropic Press

To be fair, long before Donald Trump played hide-the-president, Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, and others did it as well.

They didn’t lie about it like Trump. And they didn’t put others at risk like Trump. But Trump isn’t the first commander-in-chief to be sneaky about his travel.

Take Lincoln.

In advance of his inauguration, Lincoln had been warned by detective Allan Pinkerton that Southern sympathizers planned to attack his train en route to Washington. So Honest Abe switched locomotives and snuck through Baltimore unannounced to arrive at the White House safely.

Lincoln, unlike Trump, didn’t lie about it. He just didn’t advertise his change in travel arrangements.

More recently, other presidents have also slipped out of town unannounced. Among them:

Barack Obama made an unannounced nighttime flight to Afghanistan in 2010 while publicly scheduled to spend the weekend at Camp David.

Joe Biden took a covert, multi-hour train ride into Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2023 while his public schedule maintained he was still in Washington.

Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon both made confidential, high-risk visits to troops and leaders in Vietnam during the war.

Bill Clinton, in a move more closely resembling Trump’s recent ruse, switched aircraft in 2000 using a lookalike Secret Service agent as a sort of stunt double while traversing the dangerous airspace between India and his destination in Pakistan.

So, Donald Trump wasn’t the first prez to use the Air Force One switcharoo as a security ruse.

But there are important differences.

In Clinton’s case, he didn’t lie to the press or the American people about it. The game was up when he stepped off a corporate jet in Pakistan six hours after taking off. He also had alerted the chief of the White House Press Correspondents Association—off the record, of course—about what was going on.

He might have lied about Monica Lewinsky, but not about this.

Alerting the press pool covering the president has been a standard practice for decades, and while they might not like it, it is a practice that most presidents have followed—if not in advance of secret travel, certainly shortly thereafter. They may not have posted their destinations on social media in advance, but they didn’t lie about it.

Trump, in contrast, concocted this elaborate fantasy about flying his Qatari-donated Air Force One without him so American troops stationed abroad could see it. Like every grunt in Europe was dying to get a gander at this costly piece of bribery from a foreign country.

Then he pretended to board an older Air Force One, then snuck out the back door, and was whisked away to yet a third Air Force jet. Images of Trump hiding in a laundry basket to avoid detection are laughably unavoidable if hyperbolic.

When Clinton pulled his little trick, it was out of a general abundance of caution regarding security. There was not, as far as any reporting thus far has revealed, a specific threat.

Trump, however, was warned that Iran had plans to shoot down his plane.

So, sure, it only made sense to take precautions.

But did it even occur to him to warn the people he left on the plane that they might be flying with a bullseye on the fuselage?

Trump was all too happy to cover his own derriere and leave everyone else in the fire zone—including his own staff members, journalists, and military personnel.

Then he lied to everyone about it, even asserting that his newly refurbished gift from Qatar was perfectly safe—even though he rushed it into service without all the necessary protective gear, as we’ve since learned.

And when his trip was over, he continued to hide the truth.

Including from the very people he involuntarily placed in harm’s way.

Again, to be fair, protecting the president is important. But a person of even average moral character could have figured out a better way than this.

Fine. Fly out on your secret plane. But why allow innocents to board an aircraft targeted by an enemy? Just keep them on the ground waiting until you’re clear. Then, let them decide for themselves if they want to risk boarding an aircraft Iranians wanted to use for target practice.

But he did none of these things. He put their lives at risk cavalierly. Why?

I think by now we all know the answer: He just doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

See you soon

I’m on a two-week sabbatical, but will be back before the Florida primary election. In the meantime, I’m mostly using this space to share articles of interest from guest contributors. Although when I read the Washington Post report on Trump’s Air Force One chicanery, I had to stop what I was doing and write about it.

I hope you found it thought-provoking. If so, please feel free to share it with friends.

Our democracy as we’ve known it for 250 years is at risk. To save it, we will need a groundswell of support from voters in the coming midterm election.

The purpose of this newsletter—and the accompanying Tropic Press website—is to encourage that engagement through original reporting and commentary as well as shared stories such as today’s.

Currently, Tropic Press reaches more than 700,000 subscribers in Florida and elsewhere, which is great, but there are literally millions of Florida Democrats and independents we are not reaching yet.

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With mid-term elections on the horizon, the more people we reach, the more effective we can be in helping turn our state and this country around. You can play a vital role in that effort.

Thanks.

J.C. Bruce