Biden scapegoating Trump on spy balloons to distract from economy, advisers say
Christian Datoc
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The White House has spent recent days criticizing the previous administration for failing to detect China’s balloon intelligence program, which numerous current and former advisers to Donald Trump say is an election strategy to distract from President Joe Biden‘s own domestic policy failings.
Following the discovery and downing of the first spy balloon, which is so far the only high-altitude object confirmed to belong to China, Pentagon officials announced that similar balloons floated over the continental United States at least three times while Trump was in office.
WHITE HOUSE FAULTS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR FAILING TO DETECT CHINESE SPY BALLOONS
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby additionally told reporters Monday that though balloon programming was “operating” under Trump, the administration “did not detect it.”
“We detected it. We tracked it,” he added. “And we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can.”
Trump himself, as well as a number of his former defense and intelligence officials, directly rejected Kirby and the Pentagon’s claims.
“In an effort to distract and deflect from their own weakness and failures, the Biden regime has resorted to peddling disinformation to deceive the American people. Joe Biden is a walking disaster and every decision he makes has made America less safe and more vulnerable to foreign aggression,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It never happened with us under the Trump administration, and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately.”
Former national security adviser John Bolton, who will be one of the former Trump officials briefed on the balloon program by the Biden administration, claimed to not “know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure” and said he had “never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018.”
Two former national intelligence leaders, Richard Grenell and John Ratcliffe, both denied being made aware of any balloon flights while leading the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“If a balloon had come up, we would have known. Someone in the intelligence community would have known, and it would have bubbled up to me to brief the president,” Grenell said in a statement.
“I don’t remember that either because it didn’t happen,” Ratcliffe added even more bluntly.
Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper similarly didn’t “ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States.”
Keith Kellogg, a former member of Trump’s National Security Council who also served as former Vice President Mike Pence‘s national security adviser, suggested that even if balloon flights did take place, analysts did not inform the White House in an “egregious … dereliction of duty.”
Behind the scenes, Trump officials and GOP operatives backing Trump’s 2024 presidential effort are suggesting that the Biden administration’s attempts to “blame the last guy” is a campaign preview.
“It’s clear Biden’s economic policies are failing, and the ‘no mean tweets’ angle isn’t going to save him again,” one Republican operative told the Washington Examiner. “China is an area where they think they can pull support from Republicans. It makes sense to try to hammer President Trump on the issue, but the American people can see through these attacks.”
Three former Trump administration officials agreed that the Biden team is looking for “any excuse” to paint Trump as a failure heading into 2024 “with the country on the verge of another recession.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s 2024 campaign, offered a similar reaction.
“In an effort to distract and deflect from their own weakness and failures, the Biden regime has resorted to peddling disinformation to deceive the American people,” he said in a statement. “Joe Biden is a walking disaster and every decision he makes has made America less safe and more vulnerable to foreign aggression.”
The White House did not respond to questions about the Trump campaign’s claims, but top officials, including Kirby and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, have both denied that Biden’s handling of the high-altitude objects was motivated by “political pressure,” as some Republican lawmakers have alleged.
“These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interests of the American people,” Kirby said during Monday’s press briefing.
Jean-Pierre faced a number of questions during Tuesday’s briefing about whether or not Biden’s order to shoot down the latter three objects, which were not confirmed to be Chinese balloons as in the first, was a “political overreaction.”
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“The Chinese surveillance balloon, completely different operation, if you will,” she responded in one instance. “With the objects, they were in civilian airspace, so the president took action to protect our civilian airspace. They were — the elevation was a little bit lower, and he took that action.”
“What I’m telling you is what I can give you from our vantage point, how we move forward,” she added. “The Chinese surveillance balloon was very, very different than what we saw with these three objects.”