WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he and other officials spent about 90 minutes aboard Air Force One trying to decide whether a motionless passenger was deeply asleep or in medical distress.
Rubio described the episode on the Katie Miller Podcast, saying it happened on a return flight from China. He said the person was lying on a couch in a conference room and at first appeared to be napping. Concern grew, he said, when the passenger did not react to noise, conversation or lights.
“For a significant period of this flight, it was debatable whether this person had passed away or not,” Rubio said. He added that he could not see clear chest movement or a steady breathing pattern. Officials debated whether to wake the person, call a physician or wait.
“We spent about 90 minutes sort of debating should we make a move? Should I call the doc? Should we deal with this?” he said. Waking someone who was only asleep would be embarrassing, he said. The alternative was worse. “If they were dead, like what do you do? You have a dead body on the plane.”
Rubio said the person eventually proved to be fine. He did not name the passenger, and no official account has identified them. Social media users offered unverified guesses. There is no public evidence supporting those theories.
The story drew extra notice because Rubio has previously been asked about sleep in official settings. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., asked whether Rubio had seen President Donald Trump fall asleep in a meeting. Rubio said he had not and described Trump as keeping a demanding schedule and contacting aides early in the morning. Lieu later said he had video he believed showed Trump with his eyes closed during a Cabinet meeting while Rubio was speaking. Rubio stood by his account that he had never personally seen the president asleep in a meeting.
The Air Force One anecdote, by contrast, involved no policy dispute. Rubio presented it as an awkward moment on the presidential aircraft: officials unsure whether an unresponsive colleague needed a doctor. In the end, he said, there was no emergency—only an unusually deep sleeper and a story from the flight home.
