During a Monday interview with Fox Business Network, Rep. Mike Waltz dropped a new bombshell about the Chinese spy balloons allegedly flown over the United States during former President Donald Trump’s time in office.
As background, the intelligence establishment and left-wing media rushed to President Joe Biden’s defense after the balloon incident, claiming that Chinese spy balloons als flew over the country when Trump was in office and that he didn’t do anything about it.
Well, Rep. Waltz had something very interesting to say about that: according to him, there is specualtion within the former Trump Administration that the Pentagon didn’t brief Trump on the balloons because they feared that he would respon aggressively to the situation. In his words:
“My office has been briefed by the office of the Secretary of Defense of the current Pentagon that it happened over Florida, it happened over Texas, and that it’s happened before.
“We have more detailed questions but what is unclear, Stuart, at this point is, did the Pentagon under the Trump Administration brief the Trump White House and give them the option to take action or did they decide not to brief them for whatever reason?
“And there is some speculation, I talked to Trump administration officials over the weekend, that the Pentagon deliberately did it because they thought Trump would be too provocative and too aggressive.
“So that’s what we need to get to the bottom of and one person that I’m waiting to hear from that we haven’t heard from that list is former Secretary of Defense, General Mattis who was the secretary during this time period. What did he know and what did he decide to pass on and brief to the president.”
Conservatives online promptly unleashed on Mattis and the Deep State’s national security apparatus after Rep. Waltz made that claim. Trending Politics News’ Collin Rugg, for example, tweeted: “BREAKING: General Mattis allegedly kept Chinese spy balloon info from Trump because he feared Trump would have an aggressive response. This is called treason.”
General Mattis, for his part, denied knowing anything about the balloons. In his words:
“I don’t mean to make light of it. But don’t worry that it suddenly was able to find things out that satellites up in lower orbit weren’t spotting already.
“You’ve gotta wonder was it stupidity or the left hand not knowing what the right hand were doing. Why did the Chinese have time to do it. I’m going to tell frankly young guys who want to make 4-star general… bucket of rocks. But in this case, I would still say it’s serious.
“And that I wouldn’t get overly worried about it. But there are some questions that we all as Americans need answers to. Did it really happen during past administrations? Because there isn’t anybody from the past administration who is aware of it. I’m not for the first two years of that administration.
“Now it’s possible that there are old radar tapes that show things. Now if you go back and you know what they look like. Now if you go back and look that isn’t an ice storm over the Aleutians, that was a balloon. But there are some answers that the American people are owed. And could we not have taken it down sooner? I mean NORAD has a lot of Canadian fighters up there intercepting Russian planes routinely.”
🚨Breaking: Just now in Vero Beach, FL General Mattis denies having any knowledge of CCP balloon flying over continental US on his watch. pic.twitter.com/zUIRC2XPUp
— fran henig (@FranHenig) February 6, 2023
So Mattis denied it, albeit with a very heavy dose of hedging.
However, if Rep. Waltz’s claims are true, this wouldn’t be the first time that the Pentagon sided with China over Trump. General Mark Milley, for instance, admitted to having called the Chinese and promised warn them if Trump ordered an attack, which would have amounted to aiding an enemy during war time if an attack were ordered and he did that.
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1
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