Secretary of State John Kerry skipped out early on what many considered the most important NATO meeting in decades in order to see the final original performance of a Broadway musical Saturday night.
The military alliance has not held a summit since 2014. President Barack Obama said that this weekend’s two-day gathering in Warsaw came at “a pivotal moment.”
“In nearly 70 years of NATO we have perhaps never faced such a range of challenges all at once — security, humanitarian, political,” Obama said Saturday in his closing remarks.
The president met with his British, French, German, Italian, and Ukrainian counterparts that evening while Secretary Kerry flew from Warsaw to the U.S. to attend a close friend’s wedding and to see creator and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda’s final performance of his musical Hamilton. Donald Trump’s ex-wife Marla Maples, Trump foe Rosie O’Donnell, and other celebrities joined the secretary in the audience.
Kerry’s public schedule for the day was not posted on the State Department website. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. (Update: State Department spokesman John Kirby told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Sunday night that Kerry did not leave in order to see the musical but saw the show after attending a close friend’s wedding. “Secretary Kerry returned from the NATO early Saturday morning to attend the wedding Saturday of one of his closest friends,” Kirby wrote. “Saturday evening, the Secretary attended a performance of the Broadway show Hamilton.”)
The White House also did not list Kerry as a member of the U.S. delegation during a meeting of NATO’s main political decision-making body that afternoon, according to two pool reports. Listed members included Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
The secretary expressed his love for the musical in late June.
“I don’t know about you, I am obsessed by Hamilton and I keep listening to it,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “It’s magnificent.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also seen the show multiple times and has been fundraising off of it.
