President Donald J. Trump couldn’t even get a second scoop of ice cream without legacy media and anonymous sources going into hysterics, but now the Deep State is trying to convince the American people that Chinese spy balloons flew overhead during the Trump administration on several occasions — without the public so much as hearing a peep about the incident from government leaders.
As if that wasn’t insulting enough, the running defense of the Biden administration’s incompetence over the most recent Chinese spy balloon is that the international embarrassment is all Trump’s fault.
When Americans heard there was a gigantic inflatable surveillance device high above Montana, the most common reaction was, “Why hasn’t it been shot down yet?” Deep State officials told lapdog media that similar scenarios played out under Trump, and no action was taken, thus setting the precedent for President Joe Biden.
“It has happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration,” an official told The Washington Post on Friday.
In turn, numerous Trump officials rushed to defend the previous president.
Former Acting Director of the United States National Intelligence Ric Grenell, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and more all came out and said it never happened.
Even former National Security Advisor John Bolton — who by all accounts detests Trump — came out and said it never occurred.
So, it seemed as if it was just made up by somebody in the Biden administration. Then another official said that the spy balloons were discovered “after Trump left office.”
How convenient.
Then something even more eyebrow-raising happened on Monday.
Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) alleged that some former Trump officials believe that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis never informed the 45th president about the spy balloons due to his potential erratic behavior.
“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,” Waltz told Fox Business’s Stuart Varney. “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?”
Waltz added that he is going to get to the bottom of what happened.
“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,” he stated. “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.”
To recap, the alleged explanations regarding Chinese spy balloons under Trump are that, he knew and did nothing, the intel community failed to detect the balloons until after Trump left office, or that information was purposefully withheld from Trump — thereby potentially breaking chain-of-command.
Of those three, there is reason to suspect that the Deep State did not tell Trump.
We already know that the career officials in the U.S. government lied to Trump in the past in order to advance its policies and halt his America First agenda — such as when it hid the number of troops in Syria from the president.
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” former U.S. diplomat Jim Jeffrey and avowed “Never Trumper” admitted in the waning days of the Trump administration.
So, the latest revelation about The Swamp not being forthright with Trump would not necessarily be surprising.
What should be never dulled is the apparent brazenness that the Deep State went to thwart the will of the American people who elected Trump during his time leading the executive branch. Now, even after he has left office, it seems they are trying to smear his presidency to excuse Biden’s ineptitude.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.