Nothing like a pre-Christmas Friday evening news dump to kick off the festivities. We all remember the Chinese spy balloons wafting across the United States (and South America. And Canada.), with the first one allowed to traverse the entire nation before finally being shot down . . . once its mission was complete.
At the time we learned that the Biden administration was trying to hide its existence from the American people, but now NBC News is reporting that they were also trying to conceal this important information from Congress, as well.
NBC News reports (archive link):
Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.A senior Biden administration denied that there was an effort to keep the balloon secret. “To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”Soon after VanHerck’s phone call with Milley, U.S. military jets dispatched from Alaska used their targeting pods to determine what was on board the object. They confirmed that it was a Chinese spy balloon that was not carrying offensive weapons but was outfitted with a large payload of surveillance equipment.. . . . On Feb. 1, NBC News told White House officials that it was planning to report that a Chinese spy balloon was flying over the U.S. and asked for comment. With NBC preparing it report, and Biden’s decision not to shoot it down, officials hastily organized briefings for lawmakers and the media to try to get ahead of the story.The U.S. also summoned Chinese diplomats for answers on the balloon. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman met with officials from the Chinese Embassy, but the Chinese diplomats denied the balloon even belonged to China. U.S. officials believe they genuinely did not know about it.
Uh huh.
And also this:
Those bumbling Chinese have no idea what they are doing, according to the sitting president and his cabinet of clowns. And they think we actually believe them. They may truly underestimate Communist China (that whole bigotry of low expectations the Democrats embrace against anyone who is non-white), but normal Americans are not that gullible, self-destructive, or racist.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY