Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz chartered a private jet to get himself and five other Americans out of the Middle East after U.S. strikes on Iran closed airports and left over a million citizens stranded across 16 countries.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna helped secure a safe route for the group, which landed in Athens, Greece, where Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's staff coordinated the arrival. The group included dog-walker and social media personality Sarah Daither, who had been stuck in Doha, Qatar, during a layover from an African safari, and former lobbyist Jay Footlik. Bruesewitz paid for the jet himself, the Daily Mail reported.
The framing of this story in most outlets tells you everything you need to know about media priorities during wartime. Americans are trapped in a combat zone. Iranian missiles are flying overhead. Embassies are under attack. And the press wants to talk about who knows whom in Washington.
Bruesewitz used his contacts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the White House to arrange a privately funded evacuation for six people after commercial airports shut down and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem told its own staff to shelter in place. He then flew to Greece, the nearest country where he had a reliable American contact: Guilfoyle, the U.S. Ambassador.
Bruesewitz described the experience on X:
"The past 72 hours have been utterly surreal, like nothing I've ever experienced before. Iranian missiles were flying directly over my head."
He thanked Saudi officials for "ensuring that the other Americans and I could safely board our flight and depart the Gulf without incident." According to the Daily Beast, Bruesewitz is staying in the region to help coordinate additional private evacuations for other stranded Americans.
That last detail matters. The man didn't just get himself out. He's staying to help others do the same.
More than a million Americans are believed to be in the region, according to a government source cited in the report. The State Department has instructed Americans in 16 countries to "DEPART NOW" using commercial transportation. The problem is that commercial transportation barely exists right now.
That is the story. Over a million Americans are in harm's way, commercial options are vanishing, and the government's official guidance amounts to "good luck getting out." The Israeli Ministry of Tourism is running shuttle buses. Shuttle buses, during a war.
The press chose to frame this as a story about connected MAGA figures getting special treatment. It's designed to make you angry at the people who got out, not at the situation that trapped everyone else.
But think about what actually happened. A private citizen used his own money and his own relationships to get six Americans to safety. He then stayed behind to help more people. White House officials helped secure a safe flight path, which is exactly what you'd want government officials to do when citizens are fleeing a war zone. Guilfoyle's diplomatic staff facilitated a landing in Athens on short notice, which is the textbook function of an embassy.
Every part of this story describes the system working. The scandal isn't that six people got out. The scandal is that a million others haven't.
The U.S. and Israel launched a fresh wave of strikes on Tehran, targeting the Hakimiya Industrial Zone and the area around Payam Airport in Karaj. The Israelis said an overnight barrage destroyed key government and security compounds. President Trump warned that "the big one is coming" and "the big wave hasn't even happened."
Trump announced the initial strike at 2:30 a.m. Saturday from Mar-a-Lago, framing it as a response to decades of Iranian aggression:
"The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years as well as US Naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lanes. It's been mass terror, and we're not gonna put up with it any longer."
The Iranian regime has earned what it is receiving. The 1979 embassy seizure, the proxy wars, the attacks on American forces and naval vessels in international waters. This is a reckoning decades in the making that previous administrations deferred.
But the evacuation gap is real and urgent. When a Trump adviser with a Rolodex and a credit card can get six people out but the State Department's best advice to a million citizens is "depart now" with no way to depart, the bureaucracy has a problem that no amount of media framing can obscure.
The question isn't why Bruesewitz got out. It's why the apparatus designed to protect Americans abroad wasn't already moving heaven and earth to do the same for everyone else.
