State Department Says Reporters Fly Commerical : Has It Come to This?

Again, I don't know if this article is in fact based on fact, but in this case I will pull a Dan Rather, formerly of CBS News, and say this has to be true because it's what I want to believe is true, therefore it is true. Yikes!  S

Still, given the many reports that we have on Rex Tillerson as no nonsense guy, we can assume that it must contain some truth knowing the history of our former president and two secretaries of state histories. And hey, if it cause stress having to sit by the unwashed in a commercial aircraft, all the better for the main stream scribbles. I love it!

(Author Unknown)
Worth reading in its entirety.  A Reuters filing en route to Asia showcases the bitterness, anger and seething rage of U.S. journalists who have been forced to fly First-Class Commercial to cover Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Asia trip.

State Department correspondents are used to the exclusive wide-body private charters of the U.S. federal government’s airline fleet.  Previous heads of the Department of State have flown aboard Air Force 3.  Normally a Boeing 757.  At the very worst Air Force 3 would be a C17 Globemaster.

However, T-Rex is taking a smaller jet to Asia and only one journalist accompanies him.  To make matters exponentially worse, T-Rex did not select a journalist from the corporate stable of the refined and pedigreed media elites.

We can only imagine how Andrea Mitchell must be seething at having to take simple first-class commercial flight accommodations with ordinary people.  The scope of the almost unimaginable horror she has to face will soon pour from her pursed and vengeful lips.  We can predict a retaliatory report soon from the wrath of the ignored elitist within NBC.  This shall be, as they say, epic.

Secretary Tillerson has rebuked customs and norms.  The traveling correspondents will have to pass through customs and passport checks as if they are ordinary travelers.  There is a very real possibility no-one will recognize them or care diligently for their very individual and specific needs.

Can you imagine Mrs. Alan Greenspan flying all the way to Asia from the Eastern Seaboard and having to do that on a commercial flight?  My God, have we really dropped our standards of decency that far…

Air Force 3 T-Rex doesn't use it?

Oh yeah, the pontificating journalist elites are  pi**ed off.   After traveling with every possible indulgence aboard exclusive State Department accommodations with Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry, you cannot even fathom how angry they are right now without private dining, DoS chefs, shaved chocolates and Cristal mimosas.

None of this is me joking.  This bunch of snobs having to fly commercial is unheard of.

They are ready to tear into Secretary Tillerson in every single filed report.  Just watch what you see on TV:

(Reuters) U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is traveling to Asia this week accompanied by only one reporter, a White House correspondent from the Independent Journal Review (IJR), a digital news outlet founded in 2012 by former Republican political operatives.

The IJR said in a statement late Tuesday the State Department last week offered one of its reporters, Erin McPike, a place aboard the Secretary’s aircraft on his trip this week to Asia.

[…]  The State Department had previously told reporters covering Tillerson’s trip to South Korea, Japan, and China that he would not be taking reporters on his plane and that they would have to fly commercially, breaking with decades of precedent stretching back to Henry Kissinger.

Major news organizations complained, among them the BBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post and Reuters.

The State Department Correspondents Association, which represents reporters who cover U.S. diplomacy, said in a statement that it was “disappointed” Tillerson chose to travel to Asia without a full contingent of media “or even a pool reporter”.

“After saying it was unable to accommodate press on the Secretary’s plane to Asia due to space and budget constraints, the State Department offered a unilateral seat to one reporter,” the statement said.

“Several of our members have traveled commercially to meet Secretary Tillerson on the ground in Asia. We expect that the diplomatic press corps will be afforded access to Secretary Tillerson equal to that given to the reporter on the plane.”

A spokesman for IJR, Matt Manda, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether McPike would file pool reports to colleagues, or whether IJR had any comment on the SDCA’s statement.

For decades, secretaries of state have nearly always invited media to travel with them. In rare cases, particularly late in a secretary’s tenure, some outlets have declined the invitations, such as for former Secretary John Kerry’s December 2016 trip to Saudi Arabia.

Republican secretaries of state Alexander Haig, George Shultz, James Baker, and Condoleezza Rice routinely took 10 or more journalists on their overseas trips, even to conflict zones such as Lebanon and Central America.

Up through Tuesday, just hours before Tillerson was scheduled to leave, the State Department declined to confirm whether there would be any reporters on Tillerson’s plane.

Acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a phone briefing with reporters on Tuesday that the agency was considering “having a seat available” on his plane.

“We’ve been very clear, frankly, that this is a smaller footprint all around, and this is the Secretary’s decision, to travel with a smaller footprint,” Toner said. “To some degree, it’s a cost-saving measure.”  (read more)

The rest of the article is Reuters tearing into IJR for having the audacity to accept a seat on the flight with T-Rex.   This is like High School mean girls taken to exponential levels of vitriol and hatred.

This is going to be ugly.  Very, very ugly.

Oh, and by the way, the party is over!!!