Seth Meyers, host of NBC's "Late Night," has joked about President Donald Trump's clandestine departure from Air Force One last month. Trump reportedly left a plane carrying White House staffers and members of the press aboard, opting for a secret exit via a catering truck onto a smaller aircraft due to an apparent Iranian assassination threat.
Meyers raised the incident on his podcast, "A Closer Look: Out of Office," questioning whether the press should continue participating in the White House Correspondents' Dinner after the president left them on a "decoy plane." The president had been departing Turkey following a NATO summit when the security concern arose.
Trump later asserted that he was at greater risk on the smaller plane than the journalists he left behind. Meyers found the situation remarkable, even for his predecessor's tenure, stating, "I thought we’d heard everything that was great about — not great, let me stress, none of it’s great — that we had heard all of the craziest details about President Trump leaving Turkey on the old Air Force One."
Following Trump's departure method, the White House Correspondents' Association president, Jacqui Heinrich, sent a memo to the press corps. She stated that she has requested the administration to establish more comprehensive "press safety" protocols for upcoming dinners. The organization suggested that stricter security measures could have potentially prevented a shooting incident that occurred in April during the correspondents' dinner.
Meyers also offered a humorous suggestion for how Trump could have incorporated his catering truck escape into a comedic bit at a future event. He proposed a scenario where Trump announces his absence from the dinner, only for a catering truck to drive down the aisle with rock music playing, and Trump emerging from the back. This sentiment was echoed by "Late Night with Seth Meyers" writer Sal Gentile, who suggested the next correspondents' dinner should be held inside a catering cart if everyone could fit.