On Friday, White House spokesdroid John Kirby appeared on Fox News to sing a new tune about the ongoing issue of mysterious drones buzzing about over New Jersey, Maryland, and other East Coast areas. Kirby managed to talk a lot without saying much, which seems to be a requirement to be a spokesman in the Biden administration. What he did say, though, represented a change in course from Thursday.
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Fox host Martha MacCallum pushed Kirby on the matter:
Martha MacCallum: “Do you know, and you can’t say? Can you tell me that?”
John Kirby: “No, I’m telling you Martha, we don’t know, every… we don’t know.”
MM: “Let me ask you…”
JK “…to corroborate every single sighting. Some of them we have, but not all of them, and we’re working hard to do that, we know people are afraid of it, we know people have concerns, we have those same concerns.
They do? Only yesterday, Kirby said:
We have not been able to, and neither have state and local law enforcement authorities, corroborate any of the visual sightings. To the contrary, on review of available imagery it appears that many of the reported sightings are of manned aircraft, that are being operated lawfully. The United States Coast Guard has been providing support to the state of New Jersey and has confirmed that there is no evidence of any foreign-based involvement from foreign vessels. And importantly, there are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace.
That seems like quite the change in 24 hours.
Previously on RedState: The Plot Thickens: Maryland Governor Larry Hogan Witnesses Mysterious Lights
UPDATE: White House Speaks Out on NJ Drone Mystery, ‘Answers’ Will Satisfy No One
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President-elect Trump took to his Truth Social platform to advocate for more direct action:
Later in the Fox interview, Kirby noted that the drones he now admits exist could be “commercial activity of some kind,” but when MacCallum pressed him on the matter, he replied:
MM: “Why not just take one down and figure out what’s going on?”
JK: “Well, you, OK, the idea of taking something down, again, you get what you, you want to worry about public safety, first of all, we don’t have enough conclusions to take that kind of a policy action. But let’s just assume for a minute, Martha, that we did, I mean you’re not going to want to shoot something down where it can hit somebody’s house or hurt someone.”
That’s a fair point, we must admit, but the host also points out a Coast Guard report that several drones are following one of their ships, which 1) is suspicious in the extreme, and 2) in a location (at sea) where the drone is unlikely to hit anything but water.
The timing of all this is, to say the least, suspicious, as is the Biden administration’s lack of any decisive action.
John Kirby’s sudden flip from Thursday’s denial that there was anything to worry about is troubling. One is tempted to demand what he knows and when he knew it, and the answer to the second half of that famous query would appear to be “since yesterday.” Between his press briefing then and his appearance on Fox Friday, something has changed. People in several states have reported seeing these drones, including some who have compared the appearances with commercial flight tracker apps to avoid misidentifying a manned aircraft that is being operated lawfully.
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The drone sightings are expanding, as well; at the time of this writing, Fox News’ Harris Faulker, on her X account Friday, posted her own first-hand account of several drones over New York City.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Sooner or later, preferably before January 20th, the government is going to have to take some kind of concrete action to identify these drones and their users and determine just what their purpose is. These are reported to not be small hobby drones, after all, but heftier machines capable of carrying payloads – something about which the government should be presuming the worst.