Trump denies spy balloons entered U.S. under his watch
Former President Donald Trump says the Department of Defense is wrong when they assert three Chinese spy balloons flew over the U.S. during his term as president.
“It never happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday morning.
On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced in a written statement an F-22 fighter jet had successfully downed what officials at the Pentagon said was a surveillance and reconnaissance balloon controlled by the Chinese government and which had made its way across the entirety of the country over the course of the week.
In reporting the downing of the aircraft, defense officials also claimed that it wasn’t the first time such a balloon had entered the nation’s airspace, pointing out three times it apparently occurred under Trump which are just now coming to light.
Those balloons, the defense official reportedly said, didn’t tarry over U.S. territory for as long and were not shot down.
“Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration,” the DoD news service wrote this weekend, referencing an unnamed Defense Department official.
The 45th president says those flights didn’t occur.
“China had too much respect for ‘TRUMP’ for this to have happened, and it NEVER did. JUST FAKE DISINFORMATION!” the former president wrote on his Truth Social media platform Sunday.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served in that role under Trump from June 2019 to November 2020 and before that as Secretary of the Army, also denied ever hearing of any such airspace transgressions.
“I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” Esper said during an appearance on CNN. “I would remember that for sure.”
The Associated Press also reported there was yet another balloon flight the public neither noticed nor was made aware of earlier under President Biden.
Biden told reporters he gave the order for the military to down the balloon Wednesday but, in accordance with the advice of defense officials, also ordered them to wait until it was safely over the ocean where the remnants of the three-school-bus sized airship wouldn’t damage infrastructure or harm anyone on the ground.
Despite it being shot down over the water, officials said, the debris field from the balloon stretches for seven miles. The DoD will send the USS Oscar Austin, a Navy destroyer, the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship, and the guided missile cruiser the USS Philippine Sea to assist in a recovery effort. A salvage vessel will arrive in a few days, the DoD said, along with forensics teams from the FBI.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the “attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force” in a Sunday statement, according to the South China Morning Post, calling the balloon’s downing an “overreaction” by the U.S.