In Tuesday's White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre tried, again, to claim that President Joe Biden and his administration "did something" to prevent the Chinese spy balloon from gathering intelligence as it floated across the continental United States earlier this year.
"We knew the flight path of the balloon before it crossed the United States, that's something that I said from here," the White House press secretary said on Tuesday. "We took precautions in advance to ensure it didn't get sensitive information, also something that I said from this podium," Jean-Pierre added.
"When it comes to technology like this balloon, it has limited additive value compared to other means of intelligence collection," Biden's spokeswoman argued, trying again to minimize the gravity of the fact that the Biden White House allowed a hostile foreign nation to violate U.S. sovereignty and international law for days without taking action.
"The bottom line," Jean-Pierre insisted, was that "the administration identified this problem and did something about it."
KJP: "We knew the flight path of the [Chinese spy] balloon...We took precautions in advance to ensure it didn't get sensitive information...The bottom line is...[we] did something about it." pic.twitter.com/BpgpVqRDdB
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 4, 2023
This is America and Karine Jean-Pierre is entitled to speak freely. She is not, however, entitled to her own "facts" that do not actually align with reality.
As Jean-Pierre herself reiterated on Tuesday, the Biden administration "knew the flight path of the balloon before it crossed" our country. Yet Biden did not do anything to prevent the CCP's spy balloon from traversing the continental U.S.
What's more, despite Jean-Pierre's claim that the Biden administration "took precautions" to "ensure" the CCP spy balloon "didn't get sensitive information." But, as Leah reported earlier this week, Biden's supposedly decisive action "did block some data collection" but "wasn't able to prevent it all," according to NBC News sources.
NBC News noted:
China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.
Karine Jean-Pierre, on Tuesday, said she was "not going to confirm or address" NBC News' report.
But, again, if the Biden administration knew that the CCP spy balloon was drifting toward the United States, then took "precautions" that only limited — rather than prevented — Beijing's ability to gather intelligence, the president does not deserve the accolades Jean-Pierre seems to think Biden is entitled.
The reality is that President Biden did not stop the spy craft while it was drifting toward the United States from China in international airspace over international waters. Biden didn't stop the craft as it made its way across Alaska's barren and mostly uninhabited landscape. Biden didn't work with his BFF in Canada Justin Trudeau to down the balloon over remote areas of British Columbia. Biden didn't shoot the balloon down when it entered U.S. airspace over sparsely-populated Montana as it began collecting intelligence from sensitive sites in the continental U.S.
No, Biden waited until the balloon had made its way across another half-dozen states and exited the Atlantic coast of South Carolina. That's not action. Biden doesn't deserve credit for his "dealing" with the CCP spy balloon. And the White House shouldn't expect to land a victory lap on Biden's supposedly effective handling of the spy balloon.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member