The past month has been emblematic of Biden’s presidency. No matter how obvious the lie, they just can’t seem to help themselves. Biden has spent his entire life lying, so his fibs come as naturally as breathing. Adding to that character flaw is the inescapable fact that Joe Biden is incapable of accepting blame. Nothing is ever his fault.
A disastrous and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan? Not his fault.
Inflation? Not his fault.
Classified documents at his home and private office? Not his fault.
When a giant ChiCom spy balloon traversed the continental United States, finally exiting off the coast of South Carolina, this administration acted like that was the plan all along, that it was actually a good thing. NORAD command absurdly suggested that the ChiCom Spy platform hovering over America posed no threat because it “showed no hostile intent.”
When Hitler massed troops on Poland’s border, he said something like that. He had no hostile intent. Until he did. Apparently, a spy isn’t a spy until the spy announces “hostile intent.”
American citizens didn’t learn of its existence from NORAD – we learned of it from a private citizen in Montana. He saw it and took a video of a hostile power’s spy platform drifting across his state and the ICBM silos housed in it. The spy arrays were visible to anyone with a pair of binoculars.
Although it left China, crossed open water, traversed above the Aleutians then Alaska proper, then across Canada, and then into Montana’s airspace, our betters either didn’t look up or didn’t look at a radar screen. And if they did they thought that something the size of a house launched by China’s military posed no threat.
My colleague Nick Arama pointed out that it could have housed an EMP, or worse. But according to this administration, a potential EMP platform isn’t really a threat until it knocks us into the stone age, or into a nuclear winter.
Nick also pointed out that as Biden’s people sought to spin this into a “Trump did, and worse” the story started to fall apart like most of Biden’s stories do. First Biden’s people planted a story with willing media hacks via “an unnamed defense official” claiming Trump let three ChiCom spy ships float over the US. Of course, Biden’s water carriers were aghast. The reaction from Trump and his administration was swift. It. Never. Happened.
Then the spin cycle went into overdrive. It wasn’t a senior defense official it was someone in “US Intelligence” who claimed it has happened, but no one knew about it, but Trump was to blame. Yes if you were smelling a rat so was everyone else – at least everyone with an IQ above room temperature.
So the balloons were invisible? How does that work? It only works when the chief executive cannot accept fault or responsibility and his default when cornered is cast blame on Trump. What would have been a better course of action after being shown a fool would be to shut up. But Biden and his team of spin doctors can’t do that.
John Kirby, National Security Council strategic communications coordinator, said earlier Monday that Biden’s people “reached out in good faith” to Trump officials and offered to brief them on the prior incursions. Also from the Washington Post:
Two former defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that the earlier balloons may have initially been characterized by the Pentagon as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” mysterious craft that the Defense Department cannot fully explain.
Tom Cotton called out the rank dishonesty and the misuse of intelligence for a cheap political stunt that, in the end, backfired.
What they did over the weekend was the opposite of good faith: deceptively leaking classified information on background to point the finger at the last administration to excuse their own failures. Caught, they now ‘fess up and plead honest mistake. Give me a break. pic.twitter.com/0JZ5hLcxSD
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 7, 2023
Why is this part of the story as bad or worse than simply failing to shoot down a ChiCom spy platform when they had the chance? Because the information leaked to the press was information clearly from intelligence gathering either human assets or signal assets or a combination of both. Either way, that information was leaked to lessen the stink of Biden’s incompetence and shift public derision, to Trump. It didn’t work. All it did was reveal that Biden and his team of lackeys can’t accept fault or criticism and they will burn national security assets to cover up their incompetence.
Remember the axiom “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup”? Richard Nixon blew up and fell to earth, not because of a gang of incompetent sleuths botched a burglary at the Watergate – he blew up and fell to earth because of the coverup.