John Kerry Defends Private Jet: “The Only Choice for Someone Like Me”

It will be tough to top the irony dripping from this week’s best headline: John Kerry Travels By Private Jet to Accept Climate Award in Arctic Circle.

President Joe Biden’s “climate czar” was mercilessly roasted on Wednesday when news broke that he’d dramatically increased his carbon footprint by taking the jet to the Iceland for his Arctic Circle award in 2019. Things got even better when Twitter users recalled his defense at the time: That private jet travel is “the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that Kerry “joins Governor Newsom’s French Laundry, Nancy Pelosi’s beauty shop, Mayor de Blasio’s gym as another symbol of the political aristocracy.”

“Until we defeat them,” he wrote, “the arrogance will get worse.”

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren said that Kerry’s statement shows that he considers himself above the average American.

“The rest of us little people should make sure that we’re offsetting our car and making sure that we’re canceling pipelines, making sure that we’re ridding this country of thousands of high paying jobs in the name of climate change,” Lahren said. “But people like him, that’s the only option they have, to fly private or be on a yacht or any of these rich celebrities that do all the same things and then still worship at the altar of the almighty climate change yet again. Is this surprising to anyone? Because it certainly is not surprising to me.”

“Why does John Kerry get to pretend like the rules don’t apply to him?” tweeted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA). “I’m not sure flying across the world in a private jet while simultaneously trying to put the workers who supply your fuel out of a job is a winning strategy as climate czar.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said, “John Kerry told pipeline workers whose jobs were destroyed by the Biden Administration to ‘go install solar panels.’ But Kerry can’t sacrifice enough to fly commercial? What a fraud.”

In the same 2019 interview where Kerry defended private jets as the “only choice” for a man as distinguished and busy as himself, the former secretary of state said, “The time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean, I have to fly to meet with people and get things done. But what I’m doing, almost full-time, is working to win the battle of climate change. In the end, if I offset and contribute my life to do this, I’m not going to be put on the defensive.”

You don’t have to be put on the defensive, Johnny. Just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.