Jon Stewart has trolled President Donald Trump for using a catering container truck to secretly flee Air Force One and escape to another aircraft flying out of Turkey as he faced a security threat from Iran last month.
“Here’s the question: Did he have to put on the cater waiter outfit?” quipped Stewart on the latest episode of his “Weekly Show” podcast.
“He had a disguise. He dressed as a bellhop,” teased producer Gillian Spear.
Stewart went on to jokingly theorize, “They brought him in on the big table and it had the little cloche on it and then they pulled it in, they got the table to the safe location and then they lifted the cloche — ‘Are you OK now, Mr. President?’ They put it back down.”
“It’s just such a screwball comedy. It’s perfect,” Spear replied.
The comments from Stewart arrive days after The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Trump was secretly moved to an alternate military jet separate from the Qatari-gifted, retrofitted Air Force One plane he used to arrive in Turkey and the legacy Air Force One plane he appeared to board on his way out to the United Kingdom.
After both the jet and the legacy plane arrived in the U.K., Trump then scurried over to the latter aircraft — which effectively served as a decoy — and made his descent from the plane as if he had been aboard for the flight.
He then made the return flight back to the U.S. in the Qatari-gifted plane.
Critics have since argued that Trump’s attempt to evade the threat put the passengers that remained on the decoy plane — a group that included members of the press and some White House staffers — at risk.
When asked by producer Brittany Mehmedovic if the White House press corps would find it “cool” to take a bullet or a surface-to-air missile for the president, Stewart jokingly answered, “Absolutely.”
“They would say to themselves, ’If we can be the decoy, if we — if, sir, if killing us makes you safe, however that would be — do you want one of us to put on the Trump wig? Do you want us to put on the red tie and do that?” he quipped.