White House refuses to ‘GPS track’ cabinet members despite Austin lapse

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg presses Kirby on Austin’s secret hospitalisationReuters

Transcript

00:00 Thank you. Admiral, on Monday you told one of my colleagues that the Situation Room's ability to

00:09 track where cabinet members are is, in your words, generic, limited to the city they're in. That

00:20 seems to be in line with Cold War era capabilities where principals in the line of succession had to

00:27 call in their location to the central locator system that FEMA runs. Are you saying that in

00:36 2024 when I have a phone in my pocket that can be pinged to locate me within a couple of feet,

00:45 where I get the same kind of capability for my dog, if I want that we don't have a way of knowing

00:52 where each person in the line of succession is without them having to tell the Situation Room

01:01 or FEMA or whoever is in charge of tracking their locations? I do not have a different answer to you

01:09 today than I did to your colleague on Monday. There is a process by which cabinet officials

01:13 and their location is tracked by the Situation Room. There is a check-in every morning where

01:21 their general location is known and logged and reported. Each of these principals is issued,

01:30 I assume, a mobile phone. I'm sure you have one. Let me stop you right there. We're not going to

01:37 track the GPS coordinates on somebody's mobile phone in the administration and we're not going

01:42 to plant a microchip in their neck like they're a poodle. They check in every day and we know

01:47 where they are. I leave it at that. But the problem is with Secretary Austin, you didn't

01:53 know where he was. You didn't know where he was for days. And you're telling me that these daily

01:59 check-ins are the best that can be done at this point? We had no indication that he was outside

02:05 the D.C. area. Now, it's true, we didn't know he was hospitalized. And I've said repeatedly that

02:11 that's a problem. That should not happen again. That if a cabinet official becomes hospitalized

02:16 or has to be seen for medical, certainly to the degree where the authority has to be delegated,

02:21 that the White House needs to know. And Corrine has talked about the memo that Mr. Zients put out,

02:25 advising cabinet agencies to review those protocols. We'll get better at this. We'll learn from this.

02:30 Why a poodle?

02:31 Pardon?

02:31 Why a poodle?

02:32 Oh, I don't know. I just, I don't have anything against poodles.

02:35 I'm just teasing. Okay.

02:37 Well, back to the seizure of the tanker.