Biden silent on shootdowns of ‘benign’ objects, WH says not ‘embarrassed’

WASHINGTON — President Biden went yet another day Tuesday without addressing his unprecedented orders to shoot down three unidentified flying objects on consecutive days after officials determined they likely were “benign” — flouting bipartisan demands for transparency and forcing press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to deny he was “embarrassed.”

The three craft were blasted out of the sky by US fighter jets on Friday, Saturday and Sunday — but senators poured out of a Tuesday morning classified briefing demanding that Biden address the nation amid searches for debris in Canada’s wilderness and off Alaska’s coast.

Biden ordered the strikes with missiles that reportedly cost over $450,000 apiece after he faced withering criticism for allowing a Chinese spy balloon to hover over sensitive US facilities from Alaska to South Carolina before ordering its downing off the Atlantic coast on Feb. 4.

“I don’t have any announcement or anything to preview on potential remarks by the president,” Jean-Pierre said at her regular White House press briefing.

“The president clearly has been briefed on a regular basis on this — on a daily basis on what has occurred in the last 10 days or so,” she added. “But I just don’t have anything to preview as to if the president’s going to be speaking on this in the upcoming days.”

Biden took no reporter questions Tuesday and chose not to say anything about the matter during his only public appearance at a national conference of county officials — after also not addressing it publicly on Monday, Sunday or Saturday.

On Friday, Biden gave his first and thus far only comment on the shoot-down of the three unidentified objects, saying “it was a success” of an operation that blasted the first item out of the air near Alaska’s northern coast.

Jean-Pierre conceded Tuesday that “the intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could be tied to commercial or research entities and benign.”

Journalists pressed Jean-Pierre on the lack of a presidential remarks — with NBC’s Peter Nicholas asking at one point in the briefing, “When fighter jets are shooting down unknown aerial objects over US territory, doesn’t it … warrant a national address from the president?”

Asked by Nancy Cordes of CBS about calls for a presidential address, Jean-Pierre said, “we do want to make sure that the American people understand that there’s no need to panic” while insisting “we are sharing as much information as we can.”

New York Times reporter Michael Shear pointedly asked Jean-Pierre if Biden was “embarrassed” given the likelihood that he ordered the military to down innocuous objects.

“The National Weather Service website says that weather balloons are released around the world at 900 locations twice a day every single day of the year, including 92 released by the National Weather Service in the US, that they fly for at least two hours a day, drift as far as 125 miles from the ground,” Shear said. “If it turns out, as it looks like, that the president and [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau sent top gun fighters to blow weather balloons out of the sky, does the president regret that and is he embarrassed by that?”

Jean-Pierre at first attempted to side-step the question, with Shear pressing her: “Is the president embarrassed by that — the idea that he would take hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment —”

“I don’t think the president should be embarrassed, right, by the fact that he took action to make sure that our our airspace — civilian airspace was safe,” Jean-Pierre said.

Shear countered, “they were in the civilian airspace with dozens, scores of balloons that are also in the civilian airspace every day.”

Senators from both parties said Tuesday morning that Biden needed to address the public on the shootdowns after receiving little new information in a classified briefing at the Capitol.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said “the American people need and deserve to know more” and “there’s a need for greater transparency.”

“President Biden should speak on camera directly to the American people today,” said Sen Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

“Justin Trudeau gave an explanation to the people of Canada over the weekend. Surely we are not in a world where Justin Trudeau is a more decisive and forceful leader than the American president,” Cotton said. “Americans are worried, they are concerned, they are interested and they have a right to know why President Biden directed the actions he did over the past week.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) was dismissive about the threat from the objects during his turn at the microphones.

Tuberville said “either [officials] don’t know or they’re not telling us” why there’s a sudden series of objects being detected and shot down.

“My phone is ringing off the wall and we got a president of the United States who is not saying anything,” Tuberville said. “Get out there and tell the people we’re in good shape, we know what’s going on and let’s go on with our lives. But for some reason we have no leadership right now.”