President Trump’s FoodCartForce One

To find an answer to the persistent rumors that President Trump, the world’s most powerful man, was smuggled out of a meeting in Turkey in an airline’s food cart, I went to the sprawling US Embassy in Accra.

To call it huge is an understatement; the compound, rumored to house the largest CIA base in West Africa, is bigger than a typical African village.

Everything about the edifice suggests serious money. It's so lavish that even the walls appeared to have diplomatic immunity. No expense had been spared in furnishing the mammoth edifice. The carpets were thicker than a Nigerian senator’s conscience, the curtains had the solemnity of a Papal Conclave, and the chandelier glittered as if it had personally negotiated a Marshall Plan.

Outside, while the scorching tropical sun looked down upon the compound with the amused expression of a grandfather watching children play war, inside was arctic-level cold, thanks to the biggo biggo air conditioners.

The office of the Embassy’s Communication Attaché was one of those places where money had obviously been told to forget that there were poor people in the world. The furniture looked as if it had been purchased by a committee whose first instruction was that nobody should ever ask the price. The American eagle behind the spokesperson’s desk looked as if it had just returned from bombing somewhere and was waiting for its press briefing.

The spokesperson, Ms. Liberty Forthright, sat behind a mahogany desk large enough to partition Africa.

I was there to discuss the peculiar manner in which the forty-seventh President of the United States chose to leave his meeting in Turkey.

I went right to business.
“Madam Spokesperson, greetings, I saluted. “I understand that the President of the United States had to be smuggled out of a meeting in a food cart. Is this correct?”

Ms. Forthright gave me the smile of a woman trained to smile at questions she would rather have strangled.

“Let me correct the premise. The President did not flee and was not smuggled out, as you scandal-seeking journalists so hyperbolically put it. He participated in a carefully coordinated security contingency plan to ensure continuity of executive leadership amid credible threats. The mode of transport was not, technically, a food cart. It was an ordinary commercial conveyance incorporated into a protective security operation.”

“Madam, you have used maybe three hundred and fifty words to avoid saying the President got into a food cart. In Ghana, if a man enters a tro-tro because someone is chasing him, we say he is running. If he is discovered under a tarpaulin in a cart of plantain and cooking oil, the world is entitled to laugh. You cannot bomb half the planet in the name of American security and then be offended when the world learns that the American president sometimes requires hiding in a food cart.”

Her smile thinned. “You seem to think the President’s security is a laughing matter.”

“Not at all. What amuses me is the philosophical gymnastics of a superpower that tells the world nobody should threaten America while reserving for itself the right to decide which foreign leaders constitute threats.

Your government has sent missiles, drones, and sanctions after men Washington considered dangerous. Yet when somebody suggests the President himself might be vulnerable, the vocabulary changes entirely. Yesterday’s warrior becomes today’s fragile human being who must be protected at all costs.”

“America has never claimed its presidents are superhuman.”

“No, Madam, but American foreign policy frequently behaves as though it possesses a divine license to determine who elsewhere on Earth should continue breathing. The name Khameini should ring a bell.

She folded her arms. “That is a gross distortion.”

“Every great empire has said so. The Romans were bringing civilization. The British had the White Man’s Burden. Belgium had civilization. Every empire discovers its bombs become more respectable once given a moral vocabulary. And now America has the ‘rules-based international order’ — a beautiful phrase. Nobody knows where the rules are written, but everybody obeys them. Strangely, the country that explains the rules also seems to hold the eraser.”

She almost smiled. “You have a very cynical view of American foreign policy.”

“I have a historical view. Cynicism is merely history after lunch.”

I produced and gave her a photograph from my notebook - one of those memes by the Iranians: a cheerfully painted cart with racks of assorted foods and drinks, and, beneath the tarpaulin, a face bearing an uncanny resemblance to President Trump peeking out.

“Madam, this is not a security arrangement. This is a food cart.”

“I cannot confirm the identity of the individual inside.”

“The face is positively Trump's.”

“Memes are not evidence.”
“The briefcase, called ‘the football’ here, is proof positive that it was the president of the United States.”

“I will not comment on that.”
Ms. Forthright put the picture as if it carried deadly bacteria. “You seem to forget assassination is a serious matter.”

“I do not forget it for one second. But empires create enemies. Wars create enemies. Occupations, sanctions, humiliation — they create enemies. You cannot spend decades insisting American power can reach anywhere and then act surprised when somebody concludes the reverse may also be true.”

“That is a dangerous argument.”
“It is a historical one. Alexander discovered it. Rome discovered it. Napoleon discovered it. Every empire eventually learns geography has the final vote.”

“And America?”
“America is still taking the examination.”

“Has the food cart now become a permanent feature on Air Force One?”

“I cannot disclose presidential security details.”

I nodded gravely. “This is the most successful American military operation I have heard of in years - the successful evacuation of a sitting president in a food cart.

For the first time, she laughed openly. “You are impossible.”

“No, Madam. I am African. We have watched great powers for a very long time. We have learned to laugh, because sometimes laughter is the only weapon left to people who cannot afford aircraft carriers.”

I took my leave.
Outside, Accra continued to live and throb - tro-tros honking unnecessarily, hawkers shouting in glossolalia, a preacher announcing the imminent collapse of Babylon and the second coming of Jesus.

I reached the gate and looked back at the great American eagle, magnificent and, in the peculiar fashion of imperial birds, looking in two directions at once. One head watched the world. The other watched the food cart.

History is a merciless comedian. It has no respect for titles, motorcades, or nuclear footballs. It reminds us that beneath the medals and the narcissistic bravado of Trump, there remains an ordinary man, a coward who can be frightened - and who, on a particularly bad day, may have to escape in a common food cart.

PS: In two recent interviews, I questioned when Western Leaders would stop bestowing themselves with the illegitimate power to run the world. When would they wake up to the fact that they are the world’s minority and the time they could run the world solo has long passed - we now live in a multipolar world, and their era of unchallenged rule is long past? I also asked when they would stop with their sense of entitlement and their self-aggrandizing exceptionalism, and start to behave like normal people? When would they stop assassinating sovereign leaders who refused to dance to their stupid tune? When would a narcissistic coward like Trump stop killing leaders of another country when he cowered like the spineless cowards that he is?

©️ Ọ̀dọ̀fin Fẹ́mi Akọ́mọláfẹ́ (1st Dan, Ọ̀dọ̀fin I of Kasoa)

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com