DHS Secretary's Coast Guard pilot is fired over a missing blanket.

OK. Pay close attention. I want to walk you through this in the correct order because if I tell you the ending first you will not believe me.

Step one. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, is on a Coast Guard plane. Coast Guard plane. Government aircraft. Operated by uniformed federal pilots. The aircraft has a maintenance issue. Not in flight. Not dramatic. Maintenance. The party transfers to a different aircraft to continue the trip.

Step two. During the transfer of personnel from the original aircraft to the substitute aircraft, a blanket belonging to the Secretary gets left on the original plane. A blanket. Throw blanket. Lap blanket. A piece of household textile, hon, of the kind a person brings on a plane because the cabin gets cold. I have flown commercial. I know the blanket. The blanket gets left on the first plane.

Step three. The Secretary’s senior advisor, Corey Lewandowski, then, according to the report, enters the cockpit of the substitute aircraft, without invitation, while the aircraft is still in ascent, with seat belt signs still on. Pause on that for a second. He walked into the cockpit during the climb. That is, in aviation, a thing you do not do. That is a Coast Guard regulatory matter. That is also a physics matter. The cockpit is not where you go during the climb. The pilot is busy.

Step four. The pilot is fired. Over the blanket. While in the cockpit during the climb. Told he will take a commercial flight home once they reach the destination.

Step five, the punchline. The pilot is rehired. By, the report says, the time the aircraft arrives at the destination, because no one else is available to fly the return leg. The Coast Guard does not have a spare pilot in the closet at every regional airport. That is not how the Coast Guard works. So the fired pilot is unfired, and flies the return, and the Secretary, presumably, gets a new blanket.

The Department of Homeland Security, asked for comment, declined to address the specifics, and offered the following sentence, quote: the agency makes personnel decisions to deliver excellence. That is the official statement. Deliver excellence. The excellence in question is firing a federal pilot over a blanket and unfiring him before landing. That is the record the agency is standing on.

I am at the bar. I am arguing with the television. The television is delivering excellence the way I deliver excellence when I have lost my keys and I blame the bartender.

Funny how the people who demand the highest standards from everybody else lose their blanket and fire a man on takeoff.