Republican senators demanded greater transparency from President Joe Biden after receiving a confidential briefing on Feb. 14 concerning several mysterious flying “objects” (UFOs) shot down over the United States and Canada.
The briefing followed an announcement by Pentagon officials on Feb. 12 that an object floating over Lake Huron was shot down, making it the fourth device to be targeted since the president ordered a strike on a Chinese surveillance balloon earlier in the month.
Democrats largely congratulated the Biden administration, saying Biden moved with caution. Republicans called for the president to speak to Americans about the threat level and reassure his constituents about the military’s response.
“At the end of the day, President Biden needs to get up in front of the people of the United States and tell them what he knows,” Sen. Tommy Tubberville (R-Ala.) told reporters after the briefing.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) made similar comments and said the “fear-mongering” was concerning him, citing the “mental health epidemic” in the United States that could be worsened by the unanswered questions about the UFOs.
According to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), there was nothing in the briefing that he couldn’t have learned from publically available media.
Cotton also stressed that Biden “owes” the American people an explanation.
The lawmaker cited similar situations where former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush informed Americans about the military’s actions.
Both Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) were positive about the information and the president’s actions.
Gillibrand had a distinctly positive take on both the administration’s actions and the briefing the senators received: “They gave a very thorough analysis of their decision-making up until this point ... and it was very clear and very helpful.”
Schumer addressed some of the other lawmaker’s previous calls to make the information public saying, “I think some of our Republican colleagues are being, at the very minimum, premature and often just very political. There’s a lot of information to assess.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) asserted that “95 percent of what was discussed” could be made public without compromising national security.
The lawmaker said he believes there is “a stigma associated with this because of space aliens,” but the problem before lawmakers and military leaders is about the capability of adversaries to develop a weapon that could circumvent systems set up to detect missiles and airplanes, not objects at lower altitudes.
“Observing unidentified objects over U.S. airspace, particularly over sensitive areas of the country, it’s not new,” Rubio said. “What’s new is that they were shot down. We’ve never shot down anything [in] 65 years of NORAD, and over one weekend, they shot down three things.”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took a straightforward approach and confirmed the confusion that has reigned among many politicians and their constituents.
He said that there seems to be a misconception that until a few weeks ago “our skies were clear” and suddenly, “we have spy balloons and other Unidentified Flying Objects raining down on us like confetti.”
“That is not accurate; these objects have been flying over us for years, many years [and] we’ve known about those objects for many years,” Kennedy said.
“We’re not sure that we’ve known about all of them, but we’ve known about many of them, except for the Chinese spy balloon. What’s different about the last two weeks is that we’ve started shooting them down.”
Kennedy echoed his fellow senator’s view that the president should address the nation but said, “The only thing I feel confident saying right now is that if you’re confused, you understand the situation perfectly.”
