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player ready...U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not attend the Allen & Co. media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on Friday, leaving the gathering of one-percenters without a headline attraction.
“There’s been a change in his travel plans,” said Nicole Thompson, a spokeswoman for the State Department.
Kerry was in China on Thursday in closed door meetings with officials to try to alleviate regional tensions stemming from the country’s naval maneuvers in the South China Sea, according to the New York Times. He then made a stop in Afghanistan to meet with the country’s leaders, a group that included President Hamid Karzai and presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah & Ashraf Ghani, according to the State Department Twitter feed.
His visit to the Allen & Co. conference drew mocking coverage in the New York Post, with the paper noting that Kerry would be socializing with media moguls at a time when Iraq is grappling with regional instability and Israel is engaging in air raids in Gaza. The Post’s headline read: “Israel? Iraq? What, me worry? Kerry hitting Sun Valley,” so there may have been an optics issues in addition to the demands of international travel.
Kerry, who owns a home in Sun Valley, was scheduled to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. Buzz around the conference is that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may replace him as a speaker.
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