According to new reports, the Chinese spy balloon seen floating across the country wasn’t a surprise to the Biden Administration. Rather, they had knowledge about the balloon for nearly a week, knowing that it had entered American airspace as early as January 28th.
Bloomberg broke that story, reporting that the Biden Administration was aware of the spy balloon as soon as it had entered American airspace on the 28th, if not beforehand, but then covered up the balloon despite the sensitive nature of the sites it was headed toward. The reason? Because of Secretary of State Blinken’s planned trip to China. Reporting on that, Bloomberg said:
“As it turns out, US authorities were well aware of the unidentified object that had entered American airspace on Jan. 28, that had then left and re-entered over North Idaho on Tuesday. But with such a high-profile trip at stake, keeping it on the down-low was key.
“By the time the thing became visible in Montana, President Joe Biden had already been briefed and the White House was scrambling to decide whether to blast it from the sky.
“The gravity of the situation was only exacerbated by Montana being home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which houses a large portion of the US’s Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
Not only was it floating over the Minuteman ICBMs, our main land-based nuclear deterrent, but the balloon was headed toward Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the B-2 stealth bomber is based.
Despite the immense risk that posed to national security, Team Biden apparently chose to keep the balloon’s presence hushed up so as not to imperil Blinken’s China trip.
Once the public found out about the trip, however, it was canceled anyway. with Secretary of State Blinken playing to public sentiment by telling China that the balloon was an “irresponsible act and a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose of the trip.”
Team Biden then canceled the China trip, which Bloomberg reports was not expected to yield much in the realm of tangible results anyway, so as to not appear weak in the face of Chinese violations of America’s sovereignty
A senior Pentagon official made much the same statement as Blinken, saying “We have noted the PRC statement of regret, but the presence of this balloon in our airspace is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and is unacceptable that this has occurred.”
It should be noted, however, that Blinken’s statement about the “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty” only came out after the public found out about the balloon. Before that, the Biden administration was apparently fine with letting the balloon drift over America and violate our sovereignty so that Blinken could go on the trip.
Despite now playing to sentiment by canceling the trip and admitting that the balloon is over US airspace, Team Biden has not yet shot down the balloon, claiming that doing so would pose a danger to civilians on the ground.
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1