Stop the presses: a father went to his kid’s football games.
Take away the ominous mood music, and that’s the Washington Post’s big exposé on Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His crime is flying to Gainesville to watch his son Anthony suit up for the Florida Gators.
The paper opens like a spy thriller. A government jet glides in and a convoy of dark SUVs rolls up as security agents prowl the tarmac.
Spooky stuff?
It’s the security that comes with being the nation’s top diplomat.
Here’s the context that matters more than the atmosphere: Rubio doesn’t fly commercial, and that’s not a perk he dreamed up. Under a policy going back to a 1993 White House memo, the secretary of state is one of a handful of national security officials authorized to use government aircraft even on personal trips for security and communications reasons. The State Department says Rubio is required to use military aircraft to maintain “access to secure communications at all times.” The rules require him to pay back the price of an economy ticket for every personal trip.
So where does the eye-popping $1.2 million come from? It’s the Post’s estimate. Reporters took flight hours from public trackers and multiplied them by the Pentagon’s published reimbursement rates. But an estimate based on those rates is not the same as an itemized accounting of the additional costs attributable to Rubio’s trips. The paper can scrutinize the spending. Readers should also understand what its number represents.
Even the paper’s own experts stop short of identifying a violation. Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, calls it “more of an optics issue than a violation,” though she still thinks it deserves scrutiny. The Campaign Legal Center’s ethics director, whose group went after FBI Director Kash Patel’s travel, said it would be hard to tell a father, “you can’t go see your son play in a football game.”
There’s a debate to be had about the expense. That doesn’t turn following the travel rules into misconduct.
Then there’s the cheap shot at the kid. The Post made sure to tell readers that Anthony has 75 yards in his career. He joined Florida as a preferred walk-on who earned his roster spot without a scholarship. What do his stats have to do with taxpayer dollars? Nothing. It’s a dig at a college senior for not being a Heisman finalist, as if a dad’s travel only counts when his son is a star.
The hypocrisy gotcha fumbles, too. Yes, then-Sen. Rubio asked for an audit of Pete Buttigieg’s use of government jets. But Buttigieg wasn’t covered by the same required-use policy. His trips on FAA planes were a choice he had to justify one trip at a time. Rubio has no choice. That’s a different set of rules, not hypocrisy.
What about past secretaries? The Post relies on two former State Department officials who remember Antony Blinken rarely taking personal flights. By the paper’s own account, a watchdog put Rex Tillerson’s domestic flights at more than $1 million too. It turns out the job comes with a plane.
Rubio’s answer was simple: he’ll keep showing up for what matters to his family. Most parents would call that the bare minimum.
The Post calls it front-page news.
Readers can decide which side of the field they’re on.
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