More Fun With Clowns 🤡 🎈

This seems to be the earliest spy balloon post, and then all hell broke loose. https://t.co/oTjdYo4wLf

— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 4, 2023

I suspect this is neither the first nor last time where this administration will get grief for being relatively transparent about the sort of things routinely hidden under Trump.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 4, 2023

It seems Biden went for transparency over stonewalling.

The Billings Gazette published a photo of the balloon, which apparently led to the disclosure: https://t.co/RrOLnVUMzw

— Tiffany Aldinger (@TiffanyAldinger) February 4, 2023

thoughts and prayers to all the victims of the Chinese balloon, of which there were none https://t.co/YEcX4JUecx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2023

Ignoring the fact that the target was a balloon...

the F-22's 58,000 AIM-9X shot against the ~60,000 foot target may be the highest altitude air-to-air kill in history.

We don't even do test shots that high. Shout out to @RaytheonDefense for a product that works outside specs!

— The Merge (@MergeNewsletter) February 4, 2023

I'm reminded of that scene from Buckaroo Banzai.

Which is why you have to shoot this down over water. Or else some redneck will show up and try to season the balloon and turn it into sausage. https://t.co/GKuhJS0pph

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 4, 2023

I should be allowed to own an F-22 to protect my family from china balloons.

— Matt Paglusch (@MattPaglusch) February 4, 2023

The F-22 used a single AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, launched at 58,000 feet to hit the balloon at an altitude of between 60,000 to 65,000 feet, senior U.S. officials said in a briefing with Pentagon reporters a short time ago.

— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) February 4, 2023

Thank you for your praise of the Commander in Chief, Joseph Robinette Biden. https://t.co/oqtwd27XTE

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) February 4, 2023

JMM got in on the fun:

Twitter has a lot of experts in how you can shoot down or I guess put a lasso on a balloon 60,000 ft in the air and drag it down to a ship. Thanks everyone.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 4, 2023

All the Trump goobs are posting mash ups of them pretending to do what Joe actually did https://t.co/zTO4F5D50r

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 4, 2023

😼 

https://t.co/m3pbkfh821 pic.twitter.com/J3WZekbqLV

— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) February 5, 2023

pic.twitter.com/Ye4hKfidAM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 5, 2023

Democrats appearing tomorrow on Sunday shows, if you’re not a putz, please demand an answer for why ex President Trump insisted on keeping frequent Chinese surveillance balloon overflights of the US a secret.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 5, 2023

GOP's next attack: Dark Brandon only ordered the balloon shootdown on Wednesday to distract from the search of his beach home, where no classified documents were found. #WagTheDirigible

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) February 4, 2023

Sadly, they weren’t that clever.

sorry. These balloons flew over the USA at least three times under Trump. He did nothing and kept it secret. Took Biden to get the job done. Try again.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 5, 2023

I like the bit where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Defense Secretary ignored a direct order and shot the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina. And rather than fire them, Biden went on TV, praised the act, and said he’d ordered it on Wednesday (which explains why DOD was ready to take it down as soon as it cleared the coast). Pure fantasy because Biden had a good jobs report and took the balloon out safely and quickly.

Pentagon says otherwise chump https://t.co/RvirqOyVZf pic.twitter.com/y3hdXTGyvO

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 5, 2023

They really want to make “fetch” happen. The repercussions of two top officials overriding the Commander-in-Chief would be far greater than the balloon story. And the people reporting that (fake) story would be talking about it everywhere. And yet … crickets.

Or:

Why do you like this? Aren’t you already about to lose your law license for lying for Trump like this?

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 5, 2023

Except they didn’t refuse, they did what he asked: wait until it was safe. And they did so with good reason:

Debris field 7 miles wide per senior military official, @JenGriffinFNC reports

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) February 4, 2023

Either all government officials are lying, or only a handful of clowns on Twitter know what’s actually going on.

https://t.co/W8UgP0Lbea pic.twitter.com/a5OaEpgUvz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2023

It’s going to be a fun two years.