The jokes about Donald Trump’s secret escape from Turkey last month via an airport catering truck are still flooding the internet. Typical mockery included AI-generated images of the president hunched inside the truck gorging himself on bags of McDonald’s fries, while making his furtive getaway.
The jests about Trump’s transfer from Air Force One to a smaller plane via the truck — after Israeli intelligence warned a dubious CIA of a possible shoulder-fired missile attack by Iranians — may be funny. But Trump’s clandestine feint, even if it was more Maxwell Smart than James Bond, should be taken seriously.
It serves as a chilling metaphor for why Trump’s misbegotten Iran war has gone so wrong.
“If you’re hiding in a catering truck when you control the most powerful military in the world, you aren’t winning,” posted Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of the progressive MeidasTouch Network, who wasn’t above making fun of Trump before nailing the bitter truth.
It is mind-boggling that an American president, who flies in one of the most highly protected planes in the world, had to be smuggled onto a different aircraft because the U.S. military couldn’t guarantee his safety. It’s all the more astonishing since the old Air Force One, on which POTUS was originally departing Ankara, had a defensive system designed to defeat such heat-seeking missiles (which Trump’s preferred luxury plane gifted to him by Qatar still doesn’t).
You may recall that it was ragged, barefoot Afghans who drove the then-mighty Soviet military out of Afghanistan in the 1980s by using shoulder-fired missiles — known as MANPADS — to take down powerful Russian attack helicopters. That’s called asymmetrical warfare, in which the weaker party uses unconventional means to offset the conventional might of the opponent.
Ukraine is waging a complex version of asymmetrical war against Moscow, having pioneered a staggering array of drones that can destroy tanks, ships, air defenses, and military infrastructure deep inside Russia.
Yet, Trump refuses to grasp how radically the nature of warfare has changed, enabling weaker countries to hold off stronger ones using robots, long-range air drones, and sea drones — or even updated shoulder-fired missiles.
Trump and his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, seem to envision war either as a throwback to World War II, or through the blurred lens of the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Either you crush the enemy with massive air power, ships, and male troops brimming with testosterone, or you do a quick, one-off beheading of the enemy, bringing them under your heel.
Neither model applies to the war on Iran.
Trump’s original goal was supposedly to halt Iran’s nuclear program. In the 12-day Israel-U.S. war on Tehran in June 2025, Iran’s nuclear sites were hit heavily. After that, the U.S. could have tracked any rebuilding of those sites by satellite and taken necessary action while negotiating a nuclear deal. The Strait of Hormuz, then wide open to global shipping, was not an issue.
Instead, the president abandoned promising nuclear negotiations to join a cockamamie regime change scheme proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February. Jerusalem assassinated Iran’s grand ayatollah and planned to swiftly replace him with a former Iranian president who had constantly called for the destruction of Israel.
I once had the stamina-draining opportunity to listen up close in a small room as said former leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ranted for two hours. I can tell you that anyone who knew anything about Iran, or who listened to advisers who did, knew this plan was deeply delusional.
Trump was clearly suffering from Maduro Derangement Syndrome, mistaking Iran for Venezuela. As Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned at the time, a prolonged Iran war risked swallowing the bulk of America’s long-range missile arsenal. Indeed, these weapons, which cost millions of dollars each, were wasted chasing cheap Iranian drones.
Most dangerously, Russia, China, and North Korea have now seen that Trump’s manly U.S. Army is woefully unprepared for the wars of the future. His staggering request to Congress for a $1.5 trillion budget, an increase of 42% over the past year, doesn’t even include tens of billions in additional funding that he wants for the endless Iran war.
Yet, that budget is clogged with massive funding of legacy items and vanity projects unsuited for future warfare but protected by members of Congress, defense companies, and Trump cronies who benefit from the projects.
Prime among them is the 15-ship, Trump-class nuclear-powered battleship program, costing $275 billion over a 30-year span. Not only is Trump’s extravagance not needed by the Navy, but his “golden fleet” will be easy targets for the constantly evolving armada of unmanned anti-ship drones.
You might think the painful Iran experience would have awakened Trump to the urgent need to prepare the army for drone warfare. He and his showman secretary of war talk a big game, but neither he nor the Pentagon has yet grasped the lessons of the Iran — or Ukraine — wars.
Trump still rejects Kyiv’s offer to share drones and technology and to jointly produce the scarce Patriot interceptors. Private U.S. companies simply can’t gear up fast enough to meet the immediate need. Private U.S. investors are rushing to Ukraine to check out their innovations, but the Pentagon’s budget is still stuck in the past.
The result is clear: As the Wall Street Journal just reported, in military exercises in Germany, Ukrainian drone units once more defeated U.S. troops and armored vehicles.
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The U.S. military knows about its continued vulnerability to drones, and how essential they are to modern warfare — and understands the value of pairing with Ukraine, the world’s leader in the technology. “You can’t get training like this in the United States,” NATO’s top military leader, Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, told the Journal.
But Trump is still fixated on traditional military might as the road to quick victories — unlike U.S. adversaries in Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, and North Korea. Sharing technology with each other, they are advancing in the use of unmanned and unconventional weapons, leaving the U.S. behind.
Even as he absconded in a food cart, Trump was still declaring victory in Iran, and claiming Wednesday that he has “total control over the Strait of Hormuz.” Wrong. Iran now controls that vital waterway via drone and missile attacks.
Trump’s current “strategy” is to wait Iran out while blockading its ships, or those loading up at Iranian ports, from exiting Hormuz. Never mind the cost to the global economy or to U.S. military readiness or to American consumers at the pump.
POTUS has few options. Lacking munitions, the U.S. can’t launch a ground war against Tehran (thank goodness). And renewed bombing will only cause Iran to bomb energy production sites in Arab Gulf states, which will drive oil prices to new heights.
What a president with a coherent mind and any rational strategy would do is squeeze the Pentagon to reorient U.S. military production. That, however, would involve a new defense secretary and a full-court press to reorient spending toward the future. Most of all, it would require making the most of all the hard-won drone wisdom Ukraine is so willing to share.
For that, the U.S. would need a very different person than the man in the White House. It would also require a Congress willing to challenge the president if he refused.
And so, pending midterm elections, I believe that all the food cart jokes ricocheting around the world convey the sad reality. My favorite was one that asked, “What was the name of the operation that lured Trump into the catering truck?” The answer: “Operation Orange Chicken.”
That’s a good punch line, but here’s the grim reality: Trump is unwilling to face the truth of his failures and incapable of devising a strategy that will keep Americans safe.