Donald Trump apparently needed more than a presidential motorcade to get out of Turkey. He needed a catering truck.
A reported covert operation to secretly move the president from Air Force One onto another military aircraft has turned into a gold mine for social media, with users imagining everything from Trump hiding in a laundry cart to being smuggled out in a McDonald’s delivery truck.
One user even gave the whole operation a name: “Operation Orange Chicken.”
The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump quietly left Turkey on July 8 following a NATO summit aboard a military aircraft other than Air Force One—even as the White House maintained that the president was traveling on the presidential aircraft.
The reason? An alleged Iranian assassination threat.
The reported escape operation was worthy of a spy movie.
Trump, 80, first boarded the older Air Force One in Ankara in full view of reporters and cameras. But instead of simply taking off, the president was reportedly transferred in secret to a smaller aircraft.
The getaway vehicle?
An airport catering truck normally used to deliver meals and supplies to airplanes, according to the Post, which cited people familiar with the operation.
The original Air Force One, meanwhile, remained behind with reporters and some administration staffers, effectively serving as a presidential decoy.
Because apparently nothing says “presidential security” quite like sending Air Force One off in one direction while the president sneaks away in another plane.
The New York Times also reported on the operation.
A White House spokesperson defended the maneuver, saying the president has recently warned that “many enemies of America” have him in their sights and that the administration uses “every tool at our disposal” to address those threats.
The spokesperson also defended the new Air Force One aircraft gifted to Trump by Qatar, which reportedly lacks some of the security capabilities required for presidential use.
But once word got out, social media users did what social media users do best:
They turned the whole thing into a joke. And “Operation Orange Chicken” was apparently just the beginning.
AI-generated images began flooding the internet, imagining increasingly ridiculous ways Trump might have been smuggled off the tarmac.
Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, posted an apparent AI-generated image showing Trump lying inside a metal catering cart next to 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 meme showed a flight attendant pushing a service cart down the aisle of a packed aircraft—with Trump supposedly stuffed inside.
A parody account calling itself the Associated Fress took the joke even further, posting an image of Trump poking his head out of a McDonald’s truck parked beside Air Force One.
The image was an obvious callback to Trump’s much-publicized 2024 campaign stunt at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, where he worked the drive-thru while courting voters.
Then came the laundry cart.
One AI-generated image showed Trump being whisked away from Air Force One underneath a pile of towels, with only his head visible.
Another meme borrowed imagery from Jaws, riffing on the movie’s famous line:
“We’re gonna need a bigger catering cart!”
Someone else imagined a catering truck painted in Air Force One’s familiar colors, complete with the presidential seal.
The caption?
“American coward-n-chief, Donald Trump, sneaks out of Turkey aboard Food Truck One.”
And because apparently the memes weren’t absurd enough already, another account posted a clip from HBO’s *House of the Dragon* showing King Aegon Targaryen shouting, “I’m alive!”
The caption read: “Trump watching Air Force 1 get shot down with all the journalists he hates on board.”
The jokes are obviously just that—jokes.
The reported security operation itself, however, was apparently very real.
The White House says the unusual maneuver was necessary because of threats against the president. But the bizarre details—a decoy Air Force One, a secret aircraft transfer and a catering truck allegedly used to move the president—have made the operation almost impossible for social media to resist.
And so, at least online, Trump’s covert escape from Turkey now has a name that may be considerably more memorable than its official security designation: Operation Orange Chicken.
