By DOUGLAS MURRAY – New York Post
Why the long face, John Kerry?
The former secretary of state and current “climate czar” looked most unhappy yesterday as he appeared before a congressional hearing.
No wonder. It seems Kerry never expected to actually be questioned about his special role.
Indeed, he seems to have thought that the position given to him by President Biden not only entitled him to year-round perks, but to lifelong immunity from criticism.
Kerry has been in his role since January 2021.
Since that time, his office has said he reports simply and solely to the president.
During his time in office, he has jetted around the world to explain why other people shouldn’t use jets.
This January, he was again in Davos, where he likened his crusade against the “climate crisis” to the Allies’ fight against the Nazis in World War II.
Quite an image he has of himself!
Kerry also crops up in the most surprising places.
In March of this year, he inexplicably appeared as the president´s right-hand man during a visit to Mexico.
Biden has often spoken of Kerry as his best friend. But why did the two of them need to make that jaunt together?
Isn’t it a matter for the actual secretary of state — Antony Blinken — if anyone?
Well, we mere members of the public weren’t meant to know the answers to these questions, and until yesterday, nobody was even allowed to ask them.
For the last two and a half years in the role, all we knew is that John Kerry has a budget of $16.7 million a year to run his czar-dom.
Nobody knows how many staff he actually has working for him, but his “proposed staff” is 45 people.
Which Kerry’s office has pointed out is the same size as the office set up to defeat ISIS. Not the best comparison to make.
For while ISIS is all but dead, it isn’t at all clear what John Kerry has given the American taxpayers for their money.
Not accountability, that’s for sure.
Appearing before the congressional committee yesterday, Kerry was positively furious even to be asked about the people who worked for him.
Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) got out a chart of Kerry’s office and tried to get Kerry to fill in some — any — of the blank names on it.
Who works for him?
“I would love to know the names of the individuals that actually answer to you,” said Mast, not unreasonably. “Who is your deputy envoy for climate?” Mast went on.
Kerry was loath even to answer this simple line of questioning.
He gave out the names of two deputies — Rick Duke and Sue Biniaz, the second of whom he praised as “one of the most experienced negotiators in the world.”
But otherwise, Kerry stonewalled.
“You’re not going to tell us who’s working at your office?” asked Mast.
“I’m not going to go through them name by name,” Kerry kept insisting, appealing to State Department processes.
But the worst questioning was yet to come.
And that was on the inevitable question of hypocrisy.
Whatever your stance on global warming, the extent to which it is man-made or in man’s (in particular America’s) gift to solve it, there is one thing that everybody can agree on: Nobody likes a hypocrite.
So it was inevitable and delicious when the issue of the Kerry family’s private jet came up.
Kerry raised it himself, dismissing the idea that he flies around the world on a private jet as a “persistent lie.”
Strong. Convincing even. Were it not for the facts.
“I don’t own a private jet,” insisted Kerry. “I’ve personally never owned a private jet.”
But there was one teensy little missing detail there that was promptly provided by Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.).
In February this year, he noted, it was reported that the Kerry family recently sold their private jet after accusations of climate hypocrisy.
Given that fact, did John Kerry stand by his previous statement — made under oath?
Oh, it suddenly all came flooding back to the former senator.
“My wife owned a plane,” he said, as though plucking the memory from the distant past.
And how we all must surely sympathize with him. It could have happened to anyone.
It is easy to forget what you own when you’re married to a Heinz.
You could say Kerry suddenly remembered about his family jet in Heinz-sight.
Kerry said it was a “persistent lie” that he owned a private plane — before later clarifying that it was his wife who owned a jet.ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP via Getty Images
So pity the poor man.
According to the records, Kerry was not due to have to explain details of his activities, staff, titles or pay until October 2024.
Otherwise known as the month before the next election. So his being held to account yesterday must have come as a deep shock to him.
He had been expecting to sign this country up to international treaties, jet around the world handing away American sovereignty on the global stage and promising things that would considerably impoverish the average American household.
And all without ever having to face any questions.
Pity the poor man. He almost made it.