That claim about three Chinese spy balloons on Trump's watch is deflating fast
The Milley boys at the Pentagon have come up with a new public relations "save" for Joe Biden and his pathetic indecisiveness about a China spy balloon brazenly traversing the continental United States before it was shot down over the Atlantic yesterday.
According to the Pentagon's website, defense.gov:
The balloon did not pose a military or physical threat. Still its intrusion into American airspace over several days was an unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty. The official said Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration.
Predictably, the left has seized on that last line and had a field day:
“Yes, Chinese Spy Balloons Flew Over The U.S. When President Trump Was In Office Too” ~вЃ¦@ForbesвЃ© https://t.co/cBTMt81bnD
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) February 5, 2023
Donald Trump presided over not 1, not 2, but THREE Chinese spy balloons, none of which he shot down and all of which he hid from the public.
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) February 5, 2023
The 3 Chinese spy balloons exposes the emptiness of Trump’s tough talk.
Thank you President Biden for walking the walk.
Get ready to hold your nose reading these next two:
As Tommy Lee Jones famously asked another actor in The Fugitive, “Do you want to change your bullshit story?”
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 5, 2023
We now know Trump let 3 Chinese balloons pass through U.S. airspace without shooting them down.
What’s your story now? https://t.co/lA7wdX1Zdk
BREAKING: After Trump & Republicans repeatedly attacked Biden for not shooting down the Chinese Spy Balloon, it turns out that 3 similar balloons from China flew over the US during the Trump Administration.
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) February 5, 2023
Biden shot it down. Trump did not.
What a bunch of cowardly hypocrites!
You know the press is going to be dining out on this for the next ten news cycles.
There's just one problem, though -- the claim that Trump saw three Chinese balloons traverse through the U.S. on his watch and did nothing is ... deflating fast.
First, we have an explicit denial from someone who would have known.
According to the Daily Mail:
The revelation startled Mark Esper, the former Secretary of Defense, and comes as Trump and other Republicans claimed he would have shot down the balloon while calling on Joe Biden to resign over the stalled attack on the craft.
...and...
Esper told CNN that he was 'surprised' by the Pentagon's statement, saying he was never told about Chinese surveillance balloons entering the US when he served between July 2019 to November 2020.
'I don't ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,' Esper said, adding that 'I would remember that for sure.'
He wasn't the only one. There's also him:
Tonight, it's been reported that at least 3 Chinese spy balloons crossed the U.S. during Trump's administration.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 5, 2023
Yesterday afternoon, Mike Pompeo told Fox News he was not aware of this happening "during our four years in office" to "the best of my knowledge." pic.twitter.com/TczYr9lBXY
It should be noted that neither Esper, nor former CIA director and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are on palsy terms with Trump these days. Esper was fired in some dispute near the end of the Trump presidency and Pompeo is a potential rival for the presidency in 2024. It's not like there's a tag team thing going on with all of them, given that they don't speak with each other. That makes them particularly credible as witnesses.
Here's a third witness:
BREAKING: Former ODNI John Ratcliffe just denied Biden admin claims Chinese sent 3 balloons into US on Trump's watch: "I can refute it. It didn't happen." He said this was first time and "the damage is incalculable." He also suggested Biden & his nat'l security team "compromised"
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) February 5, 2023
And breaking news, a fourth:
Biden’s DoD is shamelessly using an anonymous source to say that Chinese balloons flew over the US under Trump - and the Trump team allowed it.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 5, 2023
It is a lie. We never heard this - ever.
Congress should demand @SecDef tell the truth. Shame on @JakeSullivan46.
There's a fifth reason the story is falling apart, too, from journalist Paul Sperry -- that a Pentagon spokesman actually contradicted this report. I can't find the tweet but I will post it when I do.
A sixth reason is a potential self-own from the Pentagon. With Esper and Pompeo denying they ever heard about this, could it be that the Pentagon knew about this and never told Trump or any of his men? That's pretty much their pattern, what with Gen. Milley caught calling up his Chinese counterparts in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots and assuring them that he'd give them good notice should Trump decide to launch a war with them. The insubordination of the Pentagon to any commander in chief is getting to be a significant story.
Here's a seventh one, and again it's breaking news:
FACT: THIS IS BLATANTLY UNTRUE & EXACTLY WHY NO ONE TRUSTS THE AMERICAN LEFT-WING #PROPAGANDA MEDIA!
— John Basham рџ‡єрџ‡І (@JohnBasham) February 5, 2023
There Were Incidents Where Chinese Balloons Dtifted NEAR US Airspace BUT NOT OVER THE CONTINENTAL U.S.
100% LIES!!!! https://t.co/WQfZqO0frZ
The very nature of these balloon flights were close to but not in the United States, which makes this a different kettle of fish. Here's the deets on the one that brazenly went over the U.S. and its most sensitive military installations, from a New York Post explainer that ran in that paper on Feb. 3:
Balloon sightings happen with some frequency.
In its January report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena — Pentagon jargon for UFOs — the Defense Department noted 163 of 366 reports (or 44%) could be “characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities,” though it’s unclear where the entities were spotted and from what countries they came.
While this is not the first time a foreign spy balloon has floated through American airspace, there are several reasons why officials say this one stands out.
First, the timing of the balloon’s flight is curious, as one State Department official noted: “This is the first time it’s happened on the eve of a planned secretary of state visit” to China.
It was also spotted the same week the US confirmed a deal to increase its military presence in the Philippines, placing pressure on neighboring China and bringing US forces closer to Taiwan.
UPDATE: And here's an eighth:
Trump calls out Biden on his Chinese balloon "disgrace." pic.twitter.com/ndBJmCF6jG
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 5, 2023
So the whole story about Trump supposedly knowing about and ignoring the presence of three comparable spy balloons from China is falling apart fast. What's being described never happened, and what did happen was not like what happened this past week. It's just spin, another bid to give Joe Biden a public relations 'save' in the wake of the public relations disaster this balloon incident is amounting to, exposing both Joe's and America's weakness.
This incident rather resembles the Liz Cheney-promoted lie that President Trump knew about Russian bounties on the killing of American soldiers in Afghanistan and did nothing. Or the one about Trump supposedly insulting the American war dead in Europe while he was on a trip there. Those stories, too, were debunked severely when the facts came out, and intriguingly, both also came from the Pentagon's lie shop.
Now we are hearing this crap, which is falling apart like a busted balloon overhead overhead and waiting for the press to dine out on the scraps.
Spare us this clown show. Trump never let balloons float overhead from China the way Joe Biden has. The claim is nothing but desperate leftist bunkum.
Image: Twitter screen shot