The Media's 'Trump Did It, Too!' Narrative on Spy Balloons Changes Again

Jim Thompson reporting for RedState 

The Hill joins in the “well Trump did it too” game and claims that unnamed “officials” in the Trump administration knew of ChiCom spy balloon incursions.

They may have been ChiCom balloons, or maybe they weren’t. The “Balloon-gate” story continues to expand, then pop only to be re-inflated with new nonspecific claims by willing media. The media has done its best to shout “What-about Trump?” in order to deflect from and defend the current resident of the White House.

The Hill quotes the Wall Street Journal which claimed:

A small circle of intelligence officials at the Pentagon during the Trump administration monitored a series of mysterious objects—now suspected to be balloons—but the incidents were never reported to the White House because it wasn’t clear what they were, former U.S. officials said.

Following the shootdown earlier this month of a Chinese high-altitude balloon, the Biden administration revealed these past incidents, but didn’t say where they had flown, and added that they likely went undetected by the previous administration.

Without any sort of fact about location, size, or any other fact that would link Trump’s “Balloon-gate” with Biden’s recent incompetence, The Hill tweeted about the no-facts story.

The Hill notes that no one can link them to China, that no one will reveal where they were, or for how long they were “there” (Wherever there was) but it happened while Trump was president so, Orange Man Bad.

According to The Hill:

Despite suspicions among some officials that the high-flying objects were from China, a Pentagon assessment never conclusively linked the balloons to Beijing, and information on the incidents was not shared broadly within the Trump administration, the Journal noted.

We at RedState have reported on Biden’s incompetence in allowing a giant and confirmed ChiCom spy balloon to traverse the continental United States like it was issued a vacation travel visa by Joe himself. After the shoot-down media immediately uncovered, through anonymous sources that Trump had allowed the same thing.

Except he didn’t.

First, the story was from a senior military official reporting that Trump’s administration did the same thing.  Then, when Trump and every senior cabinet member said “It never happened,” the story changed to a senior intelligence official claiming that some people knew, and the balloons may and may not have been ChiCom spy balloons.

Then, the country witnessed Biden ordering everything shot down regardless of what they might have been. Gone were the days when objects had to show “hostile intent” and be the size of a small house. Now, grocery bags are being tracked by NORAD.

In an effort to close the “domain awareness gap” and the better-known “incompetence gap,” Biden ordered the shoot-down of an “object” the size of a small car.  At the cost of millions in ordnance and manpower, Biden sent up fighters to blast something that could have been a used car balloon man, or a weather balloon, or an oversized “hefty” bag launched by Boris in Siberia. We don’t know because Joe ain’t tellin’.

The stories leaked to the media change more often than a newborn changes diapers but one thing has remained constant – the intent to claim that Trump “did it too”. The Hill’s headline speaks to a “Small Number of Trump Officials” who were aware of Balloon-gate. But a 10-second read of the article will tell you that the “officials” are not identified and Trump wasn’t told.

Joe Biden and his willing lapdog media are trying their best to change the narrative to “It happened to Trump, too!” and away from the fact that Biden let a massive ChiCom spy balloon take a vacation over the heartland. If the story has any validity, I would bet my house that one of the “senior officials” who knew was Mark Milley. At the end of Trump’s presidency, Milley demonstrated that he was perfectly willing to avoid the constitutional chain of command and not tell Trump things that Milley determined he didn’t need to know.

What we do know is that no one has come out and offered any definitive “what, where, and when or how about the Trump “incursions”. We also know that Biden is likely to order more F-35s to shoot down more Used Car Balloonmen in an effort to deflect from his rank incompetence.

Remember the Adults are Back in Charge.