“It’s not true. I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refuted it yesterday, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has refuted it,” says former DNI John Ratcliffe. The mainstream media has been working overtime to downplay Joe Biden’s dereliction of duty pertaining to the Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the U.S. for several days before finally getting shot down over the South Carolina coast.
Fake news outlets like Bloomberg, Forbes, and the Associated Press all released stories over the weekend insisting that Chinese spy balloons had floated over the U.S. while Donald Trump was president and was deliberately not disclosed to the public.
“The balloon spotted this week over Montana was not the first time the U.S. has detected Chinese balloons over their territory—with previous incursions occurring during the Trump Administration,” Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed “national security official.”
But numerous former high-level Trump officials universally denied those claims on Saturday.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe joined “Fox News Sunday” to refute the mainstream media claims that spy balloons violated U.S. sovereignty on Trump’s watch.
“It’s not true. I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refuted it yesterday, and former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has refuted it,” Ratcliffe told host Maria Bartiromo.
“But Maria, the American people can refute it for themselves. Do you remember during the Trump administration when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the United States?”
“The people could look up and see it with the naked eye. And a media that hated Donald Trump wasn’t reporting. I don’t remember that either because it didn’t happen,” he added.
Trump also denied the reports, claiming the media generated the “fake news” to “take the heat off the slow-moving Biden fools.”
Trump had called for Biden to immediately shoot down the Chinese spy balloon on Friday and noted that Biden terminated a program Trump had started to target Chinese espionage.
SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON!! pic.twitter.com/kye6RW9uKB
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) February 3, 2023
Despite corporate media efforts to minimize Joe Biden’s bungled handling of the Chinese spy balloon, even Democrat lawmakers like Senator Jon Tester (Mont.) recognize the severity of the incident. “I’m demanding answers from the Biden Administration,” Tester said in a statement. “I will be pulling people before my committee to get real answers on how this happened, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.”