That claim about three Chinese spy balloons on Trump's watch is deflating fast

[Ubiquitous]

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” ~?@Forbes? 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. The 3 Chinese spy balloons exposes the
emptiness of Trump’s tough talk.

Thank you President Biden for walking the walk.
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) February 5, 2023

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?” 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
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 5, 2023

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. Biden shot it down. Trump did not.

What a bunch of cowardly hypocrites!
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) February 5, 2023

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.

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

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 5, 2023

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. It is a lie. We never heard this - ever.

Congress should demand @SecDef tell the truth. Shame on
@JakeSullivan46.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 5, 2023

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! There Were Incidents
Where Chinese Balloons Dtifted NEAR US Airspace BUT NOT OVER
THE CONTINENTAL U.S.

100% LIES!!!! https://t.co/WQfZqO0frZ

— John Basham ???? (@JohnBasham) February 5, 2023

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.

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.

--
Let's go Brandon!