The Luxury of Security

Luxury travel in Gaza these days is a donkey cart — just the cart. Donkeys in Gaza not yet dead are too sick, too emaciated, too frail to stand, let alone pull anything. But carts are scarce, too, blown up indiscriminately along with the people. To get to a nonfunctioning hospital, a bleeding boy is carried in his father’s arms. “Hang on,” the father whispers. “We’ll make it.” The father’s task, to rush his wounded son through wreckage and ruined streets, is impossible. They do not make it. The boy dies in his father’s arms.¹

For the most important person on Earth, risking such travel hazards is not to be borne. That most important person on Earth is, of course, the president of the United States. Now consider that the president happens to be one Donald J. Trump and one can understand that shifting that girth from one location to another without a reliable donkey has turned out to be a fairly expensive proposition. 

It is true that this most important person has a telephone, could receive email, has means to register himself on Signal, and could possibly get someone to set up a Zoom account for him. But none of that will do. Trump must shove off into the dangerous world risking life and limb to show up in person for all sorts of critical events: golf tournaments,² wrestling matches, football games, motor races, and pep rallies to inject a thrill into the lackluster lives of the general public. Then there are his essential official missions: Flying to Hanoi to tell Kim Jong-Un in person that he’s a brat. Jetting over to Sicily to tell the members of the 43rd G7 to stuff it on climate change. Landing in Helsinki to sneak a chat with Vladimir Putin to keep everyone guessing what secrets they shared. Whipping into Pittsburgh for an AI and energy conference to take a short snooze,³ but snapping wide awake just in time to promise $90 billion of taxpayer dollars to galvanize fossil fuel production to generate whatever power might be needed to do whatever AI thinking might be wanted.

We’ve set up some awesome traveling protocols dedicated to ensuring that the president of the United States doesn’t die en route.

While the world may groan under the weight of Trump’s insistence of being just everywhere all the time, we the American people are committed to making sure he gets wherever it is as efficiently and quickly as possible with zero compromise on security. To do that, we’ve set up some awesome traveling protocols dedicated to ensuring that the president doesn’t die en route. The protocols vary according to the length of his jaunt.

Sometimes, this most important person sallies forth from his official seat of operations in the Oval Office⁴ nestled on the south side of the West Wing of Trump’s northern White House (still in Washington D.C.) on silly little sprees. With the exception of his famous walk using his own two legs — for which he was not reimbursed — Bible in hand, to St. John’s Episcopal Church on June 1, 2020, Trump normally issues forth on a modified vehicular platform derived from the Chevrolet Kodiak truck spruced up to articulate the elegance of a Cadillac XT6 limousine, fondly referred to as “The Beast.” The reference is, of course, innocent of any reflection that the president is firmly lodged in the contraption’s belly. 

Despite its enormous cost and the fuss involved, the president is required to choose “The Beast” for his ride over a donkey because The Beast is deemed by the Secret Service to be “the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world,” a must for driving Trump around the D.C. neighborhood.⁵

Should this most important person wander further away, say to the Daytona 500, the Super Bowl, or even to London to have tea — and he hopes dinner, too — with the British Royal family, he travels in the famous, but shabby Air Force One. And to make sure the president is securely conveyed to Windsor Palace, for example, after deplaning in London, his entire motorcade gets flown thither in a C-17 Globemaster transport carrier some time in advance.⁶

The problem with being 100% secure is, of course, the expense. Sure, maybe The Beast cost only $1.5 million to build, what with all its reinforcements, communication gear, and what-not. (There may even be a customized Coke button in there to calm the U.S. sovereign during traffic jams.) But to make Trump super-safe, we taxpayers have had to build and maintain multiple Beast decoys with identical license plates with identical license numbers, so that when Trump travels anywhere there is only one chance in maybe three that the real Beast, that is to say, the Beast conveying the presidential goods, the White House jewels, so to speak, is hit with a barrage of rotten eggs. 

Of course, all Beasts in the motorcade could be targeted simultaneously, but just think how many rotten eggs that would involve, a consideration that could well discourage even those totally bummed out about Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz. Nevertheless, ever since the decoy strategy was leaked by some wiseacre, the Secret Service was obliged to rethink, and in doing so hit on the idea of tucking Trump up in a cot in the ambulance at the rear of the motorcade making him look like a pillow, which was not too hard to do. Trump gets mad as hell, but if it keeps him safe, what else can they do? Meanwhile, no one can tell he’s not in one of the Beasts because no one can see anything through the tinted windows. Some people have spotted Jeff Epstein in there. Some Elvis Presley.

Although addition isn’t too complicated an arithmetic operation, especially when two identical sums are involved, it tends to muddle the officials currently animating the chambers of Congress.

Sadly, for those longer trips, operating the down-at-heels Air Force One is costlier. If you figure in machine, fuel, and staff, it costs $200,000 per hour to operate. Unfortunately, to be tip-top safe, Air Force One requires a decoy, too. Although addition isn’t too complicated an arithmetic operation, especially when two identical sums are involved, it tends to muddle the officials currently animating the chambers of Congress, which means it might be better for taxpayers themselves to do the math. But just think of the havoc that breaks out when those illustrious legislators — the minds who control the proverbial purse — are enjoined to apply multiplication to calculate the costs of operating Marine One.

Marine One is a handy little jumbo helicopter taxi — loud though, windy, and, yes, choppy — that flies our highly prized presidential material from the Oval Office to Air Force One and back. And while one Marine One may cost a mere $2,000 per hour to operate, security remains a priority. Consequently, whenever one Marine One flies Trump anywhere, four decoy Marine Ones rise sputtering to swarm the skies around it to confuse anyone trying to bazooka rotten eggs at the chopper with the right stuff in it, while trying to avoid flying into each other, of course. That means — slide rules ready! — operating costs for a Marine One flight rise to $2,000 an hour times five. But let’s not bring that up as math too difficult, questionable even, for our current Congress. 

The absolute cherry on the security sundae is something both gruesome and ingenious, but will alleviate the anxieties of Trump’s most ardent followers. We taxpayers are proud to inform them and all the world that wherever Trump goes, two extra pints of his blood type go with him. That is to say, two pints in addition to the twelve flowing through his vast and generally robust circulatory system⁷ keeping those brain cells working, those neurons firing, that jaw yapping, each of which apparently functions independently of the others. Should, at any moment, an imperfection make itself known anywhere in the Trump corporal structure due to an unlucky rotten egg bursting against a manly ear lobe, the potentate will languish not a moment for loss of blood. Experts are right there to plug up any puncture, be it ever so imaginary, pronto, although some little bit of that extra blood might get splattered haphazardly across the jaw and cheek, perhaps a dab on the nose. Supplying our dear leader with that extra blood, however, is the very simplest, cheapest, most modest and deeply thoughtful of measures we have put in place to keep the great man safe while on the move.⁸

“There is no aircraft in the world that can do what Air Force One can do, and certainly under the demanding circumstances under which this aircraft conducts these missions,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters in 2017, referring perhaps to the demanding circumstances of lifting Trump’s broad hind quarters. Certainly no mission could be so grave in this world as conveying our honored president’s haunches to his private Floridian golf course for his cherished golfing weekends securely. Just giving it a single thought would inform the deepest thinker that it’s not a trip to be entrusted to a donkey. 

Although it may well be Trump’s uttermost desire to save his taxpayers the $350 million we now pay each year to get him from A to B and C to D and E to F, G, and Z, Trump has had to dismiss his preference for the donkey and opt for his million-dollars-a-day travel instead.⁹ Had the president insisted on a donkey, his wish would have been as reluctantly as necessarily denied, due purely to security reasons — the donkey would surely not survive.

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1. https://truthout.org/articles/israels-decimation-of-transportation-is-adding-to-gazas-death-toll/ ↩︎
2. Because he always wins the trophy, it would be hard and perhaps foolhardy to pass those up. ↩︎
3. It was estimated that Trump shut his eyes and slumbered for about 20 seconds, neither long enough for a rest nor brief enough to escape detection. ↩︎
4. Now called The Grilling Room. ↩︎
5. Being so terribly secure also means that if the president wanted to get out of “The Beast” and no one else wanted him to, he would be quite definitely trapped in there, which is also a great way to test security, to wit, tell Trump he cannot get out and watch him try. ↩︎
6. Flying all these machines to the president’s desired destination is in part to avoid wear and tear on the vehicles and in part acknowledgement of the uncompromising fact that foreign countries are usually separated from the Oval Office by lots of water called by many the “ocean.” ↩︎
7. There’s been some nasty talk about venous deficiency, but what do doctors know? ↩︎
8. This has no reference local movements, clandestine maneuvers, or in-between grabs, regardless of how swift, that might occur in, say, a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman. ↩︎
9. He spends fifteen days a year relaxing in a stationary way. ↩︎