The documentary Netflix fast-tracked about Trump’s humiliating catering container escape from an alleged assassination plot hit the streamer on Friday—and one “decoy” is still trying to wrap their head around it.
Alex Brandon, chief White House photographer for The Associated Press, appears in the Instadocs docuseries installment titled The Decoy Plane. “In my more than 40-year career, I’ve never been put in the position of being a decoy,” Brandon says in the episode, adding, “Wild. Just wild.”
Brandon adds that his “spidey senses” started to tingle when everyone traveling with the president was told to lower their window shades.
“I’m like, ‘Why?’” Brandon recalls in the doc. “I see those catering vehicles up against the side of Air Force One… I have never seen that before. I don’t know why this is happening. And I’m on high alert.”
It turned out he was concerned for good reason. In July, Trump, 80, used an aircraft catering cart to escape an alleged Iranian assassination ploy in Turkey. He was whisked away in the cart after the press corps aboard were instructed to lower their shades, as revealed in a bombshell report from The Washington Post published August 10, and was secretly moved to another aircraft.
Others who recall the bizarre event in the doc include former Air Force One crew member Wanda Joell, former Secret Service agent Robert McDonald, The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe (who was part of the team that broke the story), and MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig.
“Holy s--t. Those catering trucks... all those little things start to add up,” Brandon says, recalling the realization that he was on Trump’s decoy flight.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Trump’s White House for comment.
During his escape, Trump left the press accompanying him to Turkey on board his gifted Qatari jet, which U.S. intelligence had credible threats that a missile was aimed at. He fled the scene with a few close aides, including his 35-year-old blond companion, Natalie Harp—who earns $150,000 a year as special assistant and executive assistant to the president—leaving behind Secretary of State Marco Rubio, staff, along with the press as flying decoys.
“I’ve done lots of difficult things, pretty dangerous things in pursuit of my job—in pursuit of a really good picture,” Brandon says. “But my belief is that it’s nice to know that going in. That you can say, I’m willing to take that risk to show the world what’s going on there.”
Though Brandon wasn’t so lucky to be one of Trump’s chosen few with whom to escape, the photographer says in the doc that he “shot the s--t out of it.”
