Biden set to FINALLY address the shot-down UFOs in a speech today: Report

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President Joe Biden will address millions of unnerved Americans on Thursday about the sudden spate of unknown objects being shot down by US military jets after invading national airspace.

The speech is happening at 2pm Eastern Time, the White House announced this afternoon. 

Biden’s Republican critics continue to come down hard on the administration over what they perceive as a lack of transparency over the recent incidents.

What the Pentagon believes to be a Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4 – but not before crossing several US states at a low enough altitude to be seen by the naked eye.

A US official said on Wednesday that that object is believed to have been headed for Guam and Hawaii before being blown off course.

Biden set to FINALLY address the shot-down UFOs in a speech today: Report

President Joe Biden is expected to address the nation on the recent spate of unknown objects shot down by US military jets

The downed spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast of South Carolina, February 4, 2023

The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023

Since then, three objects of unknown origin and purpose were shot down by the US military in the span of three days.

The first was over Alaska Friday, the second was downed by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on Saturday – in the first such mission of its kind – and the third object was felled over Lake Huron, Michigan after briefly causing chaos and confusion over Montana the night before.

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Defense officials gave lawmakers classified briefings on Capitol Hill this week. While some Republicans came away downplaying the situation, others vented frustrations that much was still unknown.

Even GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, head of the House select committee on China, conceded that Biden officials still knew very little themselves – but urged them to be forthcoming about as much as possible.

‘I think now is a time that demands complete transparency. Americans are unnerved. They’re concerned about the idea that we don’t have complete control over what is happening,’ Gallagher told CNN on Wednesday. 

Several called on Biden to address the matter directly. 

‘Look, the President of the United States needs to get in front of the American public tonight and explain to them what we know,’ said Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall.

‘I’m concerned about their lack of transparency and not communicating with Americans.’ 

He went a step further and accused the Biden administration of ‘fearmongering’ over the recent airspace invasions ‘to deflect away from some other very major issues’

The balloon shot down off South Carolina is being recovered, but the remote conditions the other three objects were shot down in has made their retrieval more difficult

The balloon shot down off South Carolina is being recovered, but the remote conditions the other three objects were shot down in has made their retrieval more difficult

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said, ‘President Biden needs to explain to the American people why he is doing what he’s been doing.’

However, South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham – generally known as a national security hawk – said he was not ‘unnerved’ by the recent shoot-downs but called for stronger procedures to deal with them.

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‘The point is trying to come up with a policy that makes sense, and the bottom line is that while it didn’t unnerve me, I think you know, we’ve got to come up with a more rational system here,’ Graham told reporters.

Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney similarly told reporters including DailyMail.com that he would not ‘lose sleep’ over the incidents. 

‘Of all the things we can worry about, from China’s belligerence to Russia invading their neighbor, to people starving in Africa, to climate change – this doesn’t score very high on my worry chart,’ Romney told reporters after a classified briefing.

Biden has made few public comments about the situation, leaving it up to White House officials to talk about it.

The United States has said the Chinese balloon was used for surveillance purposes, while Beijing called it a weather balloon.

Pentagon officials have said it was part of a vast Beijing-run surveillance program to gather information on other nations’ military capabilities.

Hawaii, where the balloon was reportedly meant to fly, is home to a dozen military bases alone. 

Guam houses three military bases. One of them, a US Marine Corps Base, just opened in 2020. 

Asked about Biden’s expected remarks a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry on Thursday once again referred to the downed balloon as an ‘unmanned civilian airship’, and that its flight into United States air space was but an ‘isolated’ incident.

The U.S. ‘should be willing to meet China in the middle, manage differences and appropriately handle isolated, unexpected incidents to avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments; and promote the return of U.S.-China relations to a healthy and stable development track,’ spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters at a regular briefing.

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John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said on Tuesday that the U.S. intelligence community was considering the possibility that the latter trio of objects were tied to a commercial or otherwise benign purpose.

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