What It's Like To Travel With Presidents
I traveled with Vice President JD Vance to Ole Miss for a TPUSA event, and once we touched down in Mississippi, we had to motorcade for an hour from the airport to the school.
What It’s Like To Travel With Presidents
As I sat in the hair and makeup chair yesterday, preparing to go on TV, a friend in the chair next to me asked a question.
“Do you fully understand what you get to do each day?”
It’s hard to say, I’ve tried my best not to take it for granted. But it can be pretty difficult to fully soak it all in when you’re in the most powerful place in the world talking to the most powerful person in the world with a job to do.
During my interview with President Trump, he asked me to look around the Oval Office at the presidential portraits he had hung. He pointed to each one, giving me details about where he found them and when they were painted.
I tried so hard in that moment to take it all in, to try to fully understand where I was sitting and who I was interviewing. Afterall, such a moment had been a dream of mine since high school.
I had another one of those moments last week.
I traveled with Vice President JD Vance to Ole Miss for a TPUSA event, and once we touched down in Mississippi, we had to motorcade for an hour from the airport to the school.
When the president or the vice president motorcades somewhere, the street they take is blocked off to all other traffic until they have reached their destination. Sometimes traffic is held up in both directions. In D.C., it is often an aggravation to commuters and an everyday occurrence to others. Hardly anyone gets out of their car to wave or snap a photo.
But on that stormy day (so stormy that it took Air Force 2 two attempts to land) the people of Mississippi were not aggravated, and they were not deterred.
As we drove along the interstate, Americans were parked at the end of their driveways taking videos, waving their flags, and raising their fists in the air. All just for the chance to get a glimpse of Vice President JD Vance as he whizzed by, and it was likely the only chance many of these Americans would get to see a vice president.
In the distance, I saw one car whip into a driveway on top of a hill.
The man sprinted out of his car and jumped in the air, fists pumping. Over and over again. Seeing the vice president’s motorcade was likely the best part of his day.
I’ve lost count of how many presidential motorcades I’ve been in, sometimes they can make me car sick, or delays can cause the press to have to sit in the cramped vans for two hours. The people of Mississippi reminded me that it was another moment to truly take in how special my job is.
Please support my work (which isn’t cheap) by becoming a paid subscriber to State of the Day. You’ll get more behind-the-scenes access that nobody else does.