A White House reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday if President Joe Biden is “embarrassed” by his handling of the Chinese surveillance balloon and the three unidentified flying objects (UFOs) shot down by the U.S. military.
Biden ordered the U.S. military to shoot down the four vessels transiting over the U.S. and Canada in the past several days over their potential risk to civilian air travel and national security. The military shot down a mysterious object over the shores of Alaska on Friday, another over Canada on Saturday and a third over Lake Huron on Sunday.
The reporter said weather balloons are released twice per day from 900 locations for at least two hours, and suggested the three UFOs could potentially have been weather balloons.
“If it turns out, as it looks like, that the president and Mr. Trudeau sent top gun fighters to blow weather balloons out of the sky, does the president regret that and is he embarrassed by that?” he asked.
“I’m not gonna get ahead of any final decision, we just don’t know yet, we actually just don’t know and as I’ve said … it is in consideration that that could be the leading explanation here,” the press secretary said.
“But is he embarrassed by that?” he interjected.
“I don’t think the president should be embarrassed by the fact that he took action to make sure that our civilian airspace was safe,” the press secretary said. “I’m answering the question, the president took action because we did see that these objects were in the airspace of civilian airspace.” (RELATED: Jean-Pierre Says ‘There Is No Indication Of Aliens’ After UFOs Shot Down)
The military is currently investigating the details regarding the UFOs and balloon as they search for debris in the ocean. White House Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby said the military assessed that the objects did not pose an immediate threat to civilians nor have communication systems.
The reporter asked about the criticism Biden is receiving for taking a delayed response on the Chinese balloon and responding too rapidly to the other three objects. Jean-Pierre said the balloon is distinguishable from the UFOs and had not been shot down for several days upon recommendation from the Pentagon, and that the U.S. military was able to collect data about Chinese surveillance.
“We are going to learn a lot more because of the action that the president took and because of the action that the Pentagon took,” she said.
She argued the president had the UFOs shot down to protect civilian airspace, to which the reporter argued that weather balloons are in the airspace everyday. The Department of Defense (DOD) is on “heightened alert,” which may account for NORAD picking up strange objects in recent days, Kirby said Monday.