It’s a Beast of a time in Washington, D.C.
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And in an exclusive extract from this week’s edition, read about RFK Jr’s eye-popping measles flub.
It had been a long working weekend at Mar-a-Lago and, to be fair, it’s hard to spend time with the president only to be abandoned to make your own way home.
All RFK Jr. could do was watch from the terminal window at West Palm Beach Airport as Air Force One took flight at 5:40 p.m. on Sunday as storm clouds gathered overhead.
It had been exactly 12 minutes between the time Donald Trump’s motorcade arrived and wheels up.
The Health and Human Services secretary, wearing a pink flamingo tie, would have to wait a lot longer.
He had flown with the president from Washington on Friday afternoon along with Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, and John Arrigo, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Portugal. Now he was left to fly commercial back to D.C.—on one of the airlines notorious for flight delays (and dead stowaways).
The HHS secretary waited in the airport after being booted from Air Force One to find his own way home. / The Swamp.
But the brief weather window was taken by Air Force One and Kennedy’s 6:34 p.m. JetBlue Flight 2534 was delayed over four hours. That left plenty of time to read “The Let Them Theory” while standing at the bookstore and gulp down some ultraprocessed airport snacks. Sure, RFK Jr. thinks that food is “poison,” but eventually you break down and eat the french fries.
By chance, a friendly face was waiting at the gate for the same plane. Theater producer Victoria Leacock Hoffman had been at Miami and Palm Beach launch events for her husband Cal’s (nephew of Dustin Hoffman) new book, Easy to Slip. (The book is about a young man whose uncle is a famous actor which affects the entire family.)
Victoria and Bobby Jr. used to run in the same New York City circles. Back in the day, her filmmaker father, Richard Leacock, made two movies with RFK– Primary in Crisis and Hickory Hill.
A very large man running security on the Kennedy scion let her approach. After reconnecting with her old acquaintance, Victoria decided a word of warning might be useful for her fellow stranded passenger at Gate 8.
“Be careful handling the measles outbreak,” she cautioned.
Probably tired of batting away the chicken goujons at Mar-a-Lago, America’s health chief forgot all the glossy spin that got him through the confirmation process and shrugged. A Kennedy shrug..
“When I was a kid,” he told Victoria, “two million people got [measles] every year…and only 300 died.”
Only!
And then he was off, finally, to his emergency exit row seat on the late, late flight to make his choice between Popchips, Classic Grahams or a Chewy Chocolate Granola Bar. No prizes for guessing his choice.
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