Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that he once spent roughly 90 minutes aboard Air Force One wondering whether an unidentified passenger sleeping nearby was actually dead.
Rubio recounted the unusual incident during an Aug. 11 appearance on “The Katie Miller Podcast” alongside his wife, Jeanette Rubio.
The secretary of state said the incident occurred during a flight back to the US from China when he noticed an unidentified person lying motionless on a couch inside one of Air Force One’s conference rooms.
“And for a significant period of this flight, it was debatable whether this person had passed away or not,” Rubio said.
Rubio explained that he watched the individual closely but struggled to detect obvious signs that the passenger was breathing.
“I couldn’t see chest movement,” he said. “I couldn’t establish a consistent breathing pattern in the individual.”
The situation left Rubio facing an unusual dilemma: wake the person and potentially embarrass himself or continue waiting despite the possibility that the passenger had died.
“But I also didn’t want to wake them up on the one hand, or discover a dead body on the other,” Rubio recalled.
Rubio said waking someone who was simply enjoying a deep sleep could have created an awkward encounter, per the Conservative Brief.
“Cause it’s embarrassing if you wake them up [and they say], ‘Oh, I was just sleeping,’” he explained.
The alternative was considerably more serious.
“But if they were dead, like what do you do?” Rubio asked. “You have a dead body on the plane.”
“I don’t know what the protocol for it is,” he added.
Rubio’s concerns increased because the unidentified passenger remained asleep despite significant activity aboard the aircraft.
The lights were on and there were periods of considerable noise, yet the person apparently did not react.
“This person was not responding to any of the stimulus,” Rubio said.
He occasionally believed he could detect a breath, but even that did little to reassure him.
“You could see every now and then that there was like, maybe a breath, but I don’t know how you sustain life at that pace of respiration,” Rubio recalled.
When his wife asked whether he continued monitoring the passenger, Rubio confirmed that he did.
The secretary of state joked that he also wanted to be able to account for his own whereabouts if the person turned out to be dead because he assumed an investigation would follow.
The mystery ultimately had a far less dramatic conclusion.
The unidentified passenger was alive and had apparently just been sleeping extremely deeply.
“But luckily it all worked out,” Rubio said.
Rubio did not disclose the individual’s identity, leaving unanswered who managed to sleep through the activity aboard the presidential aircraft for so long.
The secretary of state also revealed that he has his own unusual sleeping routine aboard Air Force One.
Rubio previously said he sometimes sleeps on a couch while completely covering himself with a blanket.
“I cocoon myself in a blanket,” Rubio said. “I cover my head. I look like a mummy.”
Rubio explained that he does so partly because President Donald Trump has a habit of emerging from his private cabin during long flights and walking through the aircraft to see who is still awake.
In this case, however, another passenger’s ability to sleep through virtually everything was convincing enough to leave Rubio contemplating for roughly 90 minutes whether Air Force One was carrying a dead body.
