It was, and the picture even demonstrates the size of these carts. The article even mentions as follows:

"The president reportedly boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras, and then was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, a US official told the Post."

Zero downsides except looking weak and like a doofus. The US is already looking super weak having given up the Strait to Iran for zero gain, and now begging them to just open the Strait up and publicly signaling that the nuclear demands could be dropped. Crawling around in catering trucks or carts to avoid Iran's threats is at best demeaning to the entire nation.

As for "highly effective" well..... Would have been far more effective if there weren't such loose lips that embarrassed the office. Seriously, lock that shit down.

This is probably a case of a presidency so weak that it doesn't even realize when its signaling weakness, and thought it was "cool" or something to do this, which is why they leaked it. Meanwhile our allies feel sad for us and our enemies laugh at us.

The embarrassing thing isn't using an unmarked flight like Clinton did. That's totally normal, and not something I'd find unusual in the least. It's that shuttling around in a catering cart... Why would anybody ever admit it, even if true? Just baffling bad idea to leak that part of a detail.

Someone has been watching too many movies.

Airports are an easy target especially with all that jet fuel around the place. If they dont get you on the ground they only have to wait a few moments and they can easy get the plane as it taxis or takes off.

The new technology wars should make it obvious that there is a considerable inbalance between missiles or other projectiles and systems to counter them.

Let's cross the Rubicon.