Delayed RNC attendees housed in Chicago migrant hotel

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

A global IT meltdown, apparently caused by a glitch in the CrowdStrike platform, left members of Congress, media and Republican Party operatives of all stripes suffering together as they scrambled to reach their home bases across the US following the conclusion of the RNC. Most were stuck in Milwaukee or one of Chicago’s major airports. “RNC 2.0 is happening in Chicago Airport right now,” joked one attendee who had left Milwaukee.

To compensate for the massive delays and cancellations, airlines tried to be generous, but many of the offers ended up reinforcing some of the messages coming out of the RNC: that America’s borders are wide open and that the cost of food remains exorbitant. Multiple RNC attendees said The spectator that United Airlines gave them vouchers for a Holiday Inn in the Chicago area, “which is now a migrant shelter and closed to the public. You can’t make this up.” One added that “it’s sick that we, the taxpayers, are paying to house these people. We pay and we’re not allowed to stay in these hotels. American citizens are being left behind.”

Another stranded passenger said The spectator that “United only gives a $15 credit towards your meal, and the only place I could get a full meal for under $15 was McDonald’s.”

Flights, hospitals and stores were affected by the CrowdStrike outage, but the Milwaukee-to-Chicago corridor received an outsized amount of attention because of the sheer volume of powerful people trying to get home. The cancellations affected lawmakers and laypeople alike. Congressman Chuck Fleischmann saw his Delta flight home canceled and couldn’t find a rental car, so the congressman, his wife and several others shared a cab home for nearly $3,000.

Another “horror story” from Delta The spectator saw a group of Milwaukee Republican Party workers arrive in Atlanta “after waiting in line for three hours to check our bags.” Upon arriving south, their flight home was canceled. “Delta’s website crashed and there was a six-hour wait to get through to customer service, so we couldn’t book another flight. Every hotel within five miles was booked. Every rental car was taken except one for $900. We’re now driving fourteen hours from Atlanta back to DC and we don’t have our bags.” The group has no idea when its members will see their bags again.

While some of the delays were caused by bugs with the CrowdStrike update, there were other reasons. One traveler’s plane was delayed for hours because “both bathrooms were broken. The maintenance crew? Working on the plane at the gate next to us with the exact same situation.”

North Dakota Representative Kelly Armstrong said The spectator that he was “flying from Milwaukee to Grand Forks at 9 to watch my kid’s baseball tournament.” The problems started almost immediately. “Instead, I booked a 3 p.m. flight from O’Hare back to DC, which was delayed until 7 a.m. We boarded at 7:20. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour because they couldn’t get the paperwork right. We took off at 8:30. We couldn’t burn enough fuel to land at Reagan, so we diverted to Dulles,” and he Ubered back to his car. “I’m a long way from Grand Forks,” he complained.

Julie Fedorchak, who is likely to succeed Armstrong in Congress next year, “had to take the Amtrak to Minot. She’ll be there tomorrow morning just in time to walk in the State Fair Parade,” Armstrong said. The spectator. “But it’s cool that she took a fifteen-hour train ride to be at the parade.”

However, there were two groups of travelers who had it easy: those who flew private and those who left early. In the first case, the cast of the Merciless podcast aimed at those who were “stuck on a flight during that CrowdStrike nonsense,” host Comfortably Smug chided, posting a photo from a private jet.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get out of Milwaukee,” a senior GOP aide told The spectator. “I’m just gonna drink till I get home.” Armstrong’s bartender isn’t the only one thanking his lucky stars for these travel stopovers. If Trump’s no-tax policy on tips were law, America’s bartenders would be the happiest people on the planet right now.