What the Warsaw Ghetto Has to Do With Trump’s Great Catering Escape

WARSAW, 1942 — There were Jews inside the Warsaw Ghetto who were given something that looked like status.

The Nazis created a Jewish Council, the Judenrat, and a Jewish police force. They were given authority over other Jews and ordered to carry out German demands, including, eventually, assisting with deportations.

Imagine what that does to your head.

You are trapped inside the same walls as everyone else, but you have access. You have a position. You know people. You are useful. Maybe you tell yourself that usefulness means something. Maybe it means you and your family will be safer. Maybe proximity to the people holding the guns offers some protection from the guns.

Some refused to play that role. Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, killed himself rather than comply with an order to help round up Jews for deportation.

Others continued. And here is the part that has stayed with me.

There was no inner circle.

Not really.

There were simply people Hitler found useful for longer than he found other people useful. And, it was carried down the line of his posse. Ultimately, the people who believed they had status were Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, too. The Germans deported approximately 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka in the summer of 1942 and returned in 1943 to deport and murder most of those who remained.

I thought about that this week when I read what happened to Donald Trump and the people traveling with him.

And yes, I am making the comparison.

Not between the Holocaust and Donald Trump. Between the strategy.

I think it is the same.

Create an inner circle. Invite people into it. Give them access and proximity and the intoxicating feeling that they are different from everybody standing outside it. Make being chosen feel like protection.

Some people have declined Trump’s invitation.

Others have scrambled to get in.

They defend him. Explain him. Travel with him. Stand behind him. Go on television for him. They have access to the President of the United States. They are on the plane.

Talk about an inner circle.

Except apparently there was an inner-inner circle. A party of one. Trump.

Because when Trump left Turkey last month after officials received what was considered a credible threat from Iran, the President was secretly moved from Air Force One in a catering vehicle and taken to another aircraft. Meanwhile, the original plane took off with journalists and White House staff aboard, some of whom reportedly believed Trump was still with them. They were part of the deception.

They didn’t know.

Let me repeat that part.

They. Didn’t. Know.

The President was removed because the threat was serious enough to warrant an extraordinary secret escape.

The people on the other plane were useful because someone who might want to kill the President was supposed to believe the President was on their plane. They way he was willing to do that was to put them in harm’s way, possible death actually.

In military terminology, they were decoys. In my terminology, they were sitting ducks.

And apparently no one thought the sitting ducks needed to know they were sitting ducks.

Now, there is funny. And then there is funny until you think about it.

Donald Trump, the President of the United States, being moved across an airport hidden in the catering operation is funny.

Come on.

It is.

After the motorcades and Air Force One and the gold and the endless projection of strength, the image of Donald Trump making his escape with the food service is almost too much for a satirist to ask for.

But then you have to think about the other plane.

The journalists may be my favorite part of this, if favorite is the right word. They believed they were there to report on what the President was doing.

Instead, without being asked, they became part of what the President was doing.

They weren’t covering the story. They were props in it.

Then there were the members of his own circle.

Imagine spending years working your way into Donald Trump’s orbit. Defending him. Explaining him. Standing behind him at press conferences with the appropriate expression on your face. Taking the calls. Going on television. Learning when to speak and, probably more important, when not to.

You finally make it onto the plane. And then the plane becomes dangerous. Suddenly you discover there are two kinds of people in the inner circle. The person who gets taken out.

And the people whose usefulness depends upon staying behind.

Which brings me back to Warsaw.

Power can make proximity feel a lot like protection. It isn’t. Sometimes proximity simply makes you more useful.

So, a message to each and every journalist and every member of Trump’s inner circle who was sitting on that plane:

Heads up, people. There’s giving up your life to save our country. And then there’s just plain fucking stupid.

You were left on a plane being used to make people who might want to kill the President believe that the President was sitting there with you.

Except he wasn’t.

He was already gone.

Without your knowledge. Without your consent.

Why are you still at work? Why didn’t you all walk away? Why isn’t he being prosecuted? And the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security? Why are you not being swept at this very moment?

Huddle up. You might want to think about that before you get too excited about your seat in the inner circle.

And, for God’s sake, before your next flight, find out who’s riding with the catering.