Spoiled McCaskill Said She'd Tour State in Bus, Uses $1 Million Private Plane Instead
The left claims to fight for the “little guy” against rich fat-cats … but it looks like a well-known Missouri senator can’t be bothered to travel like the “common” people.
Democrat Claire McCaskill has been caught apparently lying about traveling on an RV campaign tour of her state. Driving must be for the deplorables: Instead of taking the bus as promised, the liberal senator shrugged off the road and took a private plane usually reserved for the super-rich.
“McCaskill said her campaign was ‘hitting the road’ in an RV to tour the state, but public flight information indicates that travel also occurred on her million-dollar private plane,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“The RV, named BigBlue by the campaign, was unveiled late last month by McCaskill, who said she was ‘very excited to hit the road’ in it for an upcoming ‘Veterans for Claire’ tour. The campaign kept a live blog of its three-day RV trip from May 29 to May 31, posting updates of its whereabouts,” Free Beacon continued.
Very excited to hit the road next week in this. Names anyone for the RV? We are off on a “Veterans for Claire” tour on Tuesday morning. pic.twitter.com/XihjI71AjV
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) May 26, 2018
There is just one glaring problem with that bus tour: It looks like Senator McCaskill wasn’t actually on it.
“Unmentioned on the blog is the role McCaskill’s private plane played on the trip. The aircraft is a single-engine turboprop valued on her financial disclosure forms at more than $1 million dollars,” the report revealed.
Flying, of course, isn’t uncommon, and politicians often use aircraft to stay on schedule during whirlwind campaign stops. However, those airplanes are usually used by national-level politicians who need to travel all over the country, not by a senator who is simply running in a single state.
Bizarrely, it looks like McCaskill’s plane followed almost the exact same route as the “peons” in her campaign bus, raising serious questions about why it was necessary.
“(The plane) left St. Louis where it is based and headed toward Springfield just after 3:00 p.m. and arrived 30 minutes later, right around when McCaskill was done meeting with local student journalists on the RV, according to her blog and social media posts,” Free Beacon reported, based on publicly available ADS-B route information from the aircraft.
“The plane then traveled west toward Joplin, and then at 5:22 p.m., seven minutes after McCaskill posted that she was done with her event in Joplin, the plane took off towards Kansas City, the site of McCaskill’s first event the next day. The flight landed at 5:51 p.m., about two hours earlier than the RV would have arrived,” the investigative report continued.
On the next day of her campaign tour, the private aircraft followed the same route as the campaign RV.
Amazingly, it appears that McCaskill actively tried to conceal her use of the private aircraft from the public.
“The senator asked the Federal Aviation Administration to block radar tracking information on her plane from being publicly broadcast on the internet. The request blocks the ability to track her plane on websites such as FlightAware.com,” Free Beacon reported, citing emails it obtained as evidence.
ADS-B information, unlike ground-based radar data, is transmitted directly from aircraft, and can be detected by anybody with basic hardware. Many hobbyists legally track flights over U.S. airspace using this public system and then compare notes online.
Incredibly, McCaskill went so far as to beg voters for financial contributions to cover the cost of gas in the RV, while neglecting to mention the exorbitant cost of fuel for the private plane following it.
“The campaign asked in fundraising emails for money to fuel the RV, complaining, ‘gas is expensive,'” stated the Beacon. “It costs us $200 just to fill up the RV and with the number of places we plan on going — that adds up fast. Will you pitch in just $5 today to help fund our RV tour and power us to a victory in November?”
That “aw-shucks” plea for gas money certainly seems meant to make the liberal senator come across like a down-to-earth gal, not an elitist spending piles of cash to keep a million-dollar private aircraft in the air on the exact same route as the bus.
In fact, 2017 campaign finance data shows that McCaskill blew around $7,000 a month on her private airplane during previous campaigns — and that’s even before considering the environmental impact caused by this stunt.
Once again, being fuel-efficient, saving the planet, and watching your spending are for other people, not elitist politicians.
This is the flavor of liberalism that so many voters are fed up with: Smug and pompous, enjoying the high life — literally — that only the wealthiest can afford while looking down on everyday Americans and mocking historic tax cuts for blue-collar workers as “crumbs.”
Slowly but surely, the American people are seeing what liberal politicians truly think about them — and Democrats may be in for a shock in upcoming elections.
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