Marco Rubio Says He Spent ‘About 90 Minutes’ Monitoring a Possible Corpse on Air Force One, Deciding Whether to Nudge Them

Paloma ChavezWed, August 12, 2026 at 4:55 PM UTC

222

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to members of the media before boarding a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraftCredit: Eric Lee/POOL/AFP via Getty -

Marco Rubio said he once spent “about 90 minutes” monitoring a sleeping person on Air Force One, unsure if they were alive

Rubio shared the story during an interview, describing his concern over the lack of visible breathing or response

He joked about the awkwardness of waking someone mid-flight versus discovering a death aboard the presidential plane

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recalled a time aboard Air Force One when he spent “about 90 minutes” trying to figure out if someone had died on the plane.

During a Tuesday, Aug. 11, interview on The Katie Miller Podcast, Rubio shared that he once monitored someone during a trip back to the U.S. from China. However, he was unable to tell if the person, whom he didn’t identify by name but said was on one of the couches in the conference room, was sleeping or deceased.

“And for a significant period of this flight, it was debatable whether this person had passed away or not,” the 55-year-old politician said.

“I couldn’t see chest movement,” he continued. “I couldn’t establish a consistent breathing pattern in the individual. But I also didn’t want to wake them up on the one hand, or discover a dead body on the other.”

“Cause it’s embarrassing if you wake them up [and they say], ‘Oh, I was just sleeping.’ But if they were dead, like what do you do? You have a dead body on the plane ... I don’t know what the protocol for it is.”

Rubio — who sat for the interview with his wife, Jeanette — continued to tell Miller that bouts of “noise” and the lights being on worried him because “this person was not responding to any of the stimulus.”

“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,” he said.

Advertisement

When asked by Jeanette if he kept tabs on the person throughout the flight, Rubio said he had to make sure he could “account for where I was” if the person was dead.

“You know, then there’s going to be an investigation...” he said. “But luckily it all worked out.”

In the past, Rubio has spoken about his own naps aboard Air Force One.

He told New York Magazinein January that he tends to sleep on one of the two couches in an office aboard the plane.

— sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“But what I do is I cocoon myself in a blanket,” he added. “I cover my head. I look like a mummy.”

“And I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, [President Donald Trump is] going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake,” Rubio explained.

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Breaking”