The most amazing thing here to me is he made it to the ID checker. Most airports have immature contractors and/or TSA people running around, freakint out yelilng BOARDING PASS and I.D. IN YOUR HAND within 2 miles of the checkpoint. If you even look like you're about to go to the entrance and not ready, they will treat you like a child. This happens at PHL often. Something similar happened in CLE when carrying my wife's rollerboard down the few stairs towards checkpoint B before the checker and the bored ID checker looked at me and with a rude demeanor said "sir". To which i replied -I'm not flying today, OK...As such I get my stuff in hand when pulling into the airport to one up them.

As far as what he was up to, nothing. Just not really aware of what to do and thought that showing something may work, either because he was stupid or was aware of the tsa's oft stupidity...