**WASHINGTON** — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described a strange episode aboard Air Force One in which senior officials spent about 90 minutes wondering whether an unidentified passenger was asleep — or dead.
Rubio told the story on the Katie Miller Podcast, saying it happened on a return flight from China. The person was lying in an Air Force One conference room and barely moved despite noise and activity around them.
“We spent about 90 minutes sort of debating should we make a move?” Rubio recalled. “Should I call the doc? Should we deal with this?”
Officials hesitated, he said, because waking someone from a deep sleep would be embarrassing. “Because it’s embarrassing if you wake them up,” Rubio said, imagining the reply: “Oh, I was just sleeping.”
The other possibility was far more serious. “But if they were dead, like what do you do?” he said. “You have a dead body on the plane.”
Rubio said the passenger slept through “a lot of noise” and did not appear to be “responding to any of the stimulus.” He also described the breathing as “difficult,” which only increased the worry. Even so, he said, they debated for about an hour and a half rather than immediately waking the person or calling a physician.
They never had to decide. “Luckily, the person was fine,” Rubio said.
He declined to name the sleeper. That omission quickly produced jokes online, including an unsupported suggestion that the passenger was Sen. Mitch McConnell. There is no evidence for that claim or for other identities floated on social media, and Rubio offered no clues.
The anecdote drew extra notice because Rubio had recently been asked about another sleep-related dispute involving President Donald Trump. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about a month earlier, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., asked whether Rubio had been in meetings where Trump fell asleep.
“I’ve never seen him fall asleep,” Rubio said. “On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep, which is a big problem.” He said the president’s schedule often keeps aides busy and that Trump sometimes calls him early in the morning.
Lieu disputed that account and pointed to Cabinet meeting footage that he said showed Trump with his eyes closed while Rubio was speaking. “Secretary Rubio, I’m going to show you, in a moment, a video that shows you just lied to Congress,” Lieu said. Rubio stood by his testimony that he had never personally seen Trump fall asleep. No formal congressional action from Lieu’s accusation has been reported.
Rubio did not identify the Air Force One passenger, give the exact date of the flight or name the other officials in the debate. With the traveler waking unharmed, he could treat the episode as a strange story. At the time, he suggested, it did not feel that way.
