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Probably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.
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[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home"
] |
>
Or maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored."
] |
>
Just because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!"
] |
>
Trump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed."
] |
>
I put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do"
] |
>
So by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?"
] |
>
You know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were."
] |
>
Republicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to."
] |
>
Not sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump"
] |
>
Oh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is."
] |
>
"president" trump.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR"
] |
>
If they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump."
] |
>
How would a certain Congress member know that exactly?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing."
] |
>
well he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?"
] |
>
I would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane."
] |
>
lol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with "owning the libs"
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now."
] |
>
Would have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\""
] |
>
sharpie haha
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it."
] |
>
I'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha"
] |
>
I guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate."
] |
>
Never informed, or napped through the briefing?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?"
] |
>
My bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?"
] |
>
Stupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S."
] |
>
bullshit
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!"
] |
>
Spy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit"
] |
>
A big lie to protect an even bigger liar!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd."
] |
>
Why would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!"
] |
>
Well, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything"
] |
>
That’s a lie!! He knew!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard"
] |
>
It's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!"
] |
>
By saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite."
] |
>
Or the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics.
Also, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?"
] |
>
Thats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?"
] |
>
Lies.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants"
] |
>
Why should he be informed?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies."
] |
>
In an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.
In a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?"
] |
>
He didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it."
] |
>
I thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”"
] |
>
America has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall."
] |
>
Why didn't the press pushed about it at the time?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave."
] |
>
Easter Hay Toupee
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?"
] |
>
I am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee"
] |
>
The story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not."
] |
>
It came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?"
] |
>
I don’t know that any of your assumptions are true
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed."
] |
>
Seems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true"
] |
>
And why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump."
] |
>
See Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.
In this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.
In this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.
But that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked."
] |
>
"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner".
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe."
] |
>
Well of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\"."
] |
>
How would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China."
] |
>
He had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?"
] |
>
I'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?"
] |
>
But...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings."
] |
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Official memos he received loading………
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[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?"
] |
>
Not informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………"
] |
>
Because he would have told them to nuke it
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read)."
] |
>
They're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it"
] |
>
It's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read."
] |
>
(Smashing X to doubt)
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up."
] |
>
He knew by his phone calls to China
China "Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country"
Trump "A spy balloon?"
China "The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence"
Trump "Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's."
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)"
] |
>
I have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\""
] |
>
Representative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡"
] |
>
Do you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up."
] |
>
He was not paying attention those days.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more"
] |
>
"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons."
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days."
] |
>
If a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\""
] |
>
Ignorance is not an excuse.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!"
] |
>
Yes - it is a fact in his life.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse."
] |
>
They likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life."
] |
>
But he was "informed" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button."
] |
>
Trump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear."
] |
>
I’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons."
] |
>
I feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high"
] |
>
“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes."
] |
>
Yea right
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call."
] |
>
Honestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right"
] |
>
Why would he be?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation"
] |
>
Why should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?"
] |
>
Is it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input."
] |
>
Promote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?"
] |
>
Most of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.
But honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump."
] |
>
You think? Really… no one told the president.!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him."
] |
>
I picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!"
] |
>
It was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings."
] |
>
Couldn't trust Chump
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it."
] |
>
This just begs the question, why.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump"
] |
>
Huh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why."
] |
>
Trump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often..."
] |
>
Maybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like."
] |
>
Circle the wagons, our brand is at risk!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄"
] |
>
He and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!"
] |
>
Every time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election."
] |
>
Bullshit
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein"
] |
>
He probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit"
] |
>
Lets not gloss over the fact that the congressman would have no way of knowing what the president was and was not briefed on by the Pentagon on a day to day basis. Trump barely knew what he was being briefed on.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit",
">\n\nHe probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons."
] |
>
Yes and he wasn't aware of the insurrection
He didn't know he was eating lunch with leader of the neo nazis
And there are good kkk and white supremacists
Same playbook lie lie lie and that's why the gop have a Santos problem
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[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit",
">\n\nHe probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons.",
">\n\nLets not gloss over the fact that the congressman would have no way of knowing what the president was and was not briefed on by the Pentagon on a day to day basis. Trump barely knew what he was being briefed on."
] |
>
Don't tell him SHIT!!!
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit",
">\n\nHe probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons.",
">\n\nLets not gloss over the fact that the congressman would have no way of knowing what the president was and was not briefed on by the Pentagon on a day to day basis. Trump barely knew what he was being briefed on.",
">\n\nYes and he wasn't aware of the insurrection\nHe didn't know he was eating lunch with leader of the neo nazis\nAnd there are good kkk and white supremacists\nSame playbook lie lie lie and that's why the gop have a Santos problem"
] |
>
Like he would actually pay attention to anything else but himself.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit",
">\n\nHe probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons.",
">\n\nLets not gloss over the fact that the congressman would have no way of knowing what the president was and was not briefed on by the Pentagon on a day to day basis. Trump barely knew what he was being briefed on.",
">\n\nYes and he wasn't aware of the insurrection\nHe didn't know he was eating lunch with leader of the neo nazis\nAnd there are good kkk and white supremacists\nSame playbook lie lie lie and that's why the gop have a Santos problem",
">\n\nDon't tell him SHIT!!!"
] |
>
I do not believe that.
|
[
"i bet you a billion dollars it was in one of his daily briefings he didnt read.\nEdit: the other option would be he called China, where he pays most of his taxes, and asked Winnie about the balloons, and believed china's lie over American Intelligence.",
">\n\nWouldn't be surprising if he never read or skimmed through a lot of briefings.",
">\n\nGod. He probably never read the thing unless someone showed him a picture and brief explanation of what the picture was.",
">\n\nHe was famous from innumerable sources for being so fucking dumb that literally nothing made sense to him and he never bothered to read anything. They had to condense briefings down to one page and tried to mention his name as much as possible because that was the only thing that would get his attention.\nHe doesn't know a single thing about history or the world or other countries so they couldn't even have an equal and useful discussion about any of the intelligence or issues of the day, like talking to a dumb and angry 3 year old that they all had to babysit and manage so he didn't blow up the world",
">\n\nI think I found an intel briefing.\nOH NO! RUSSIA is moving troops up to the UKRAINIAN border! Can you, President TRUMP, CIRCLE all 5 DIVISIONS with your SHARPIE?",
">\n\nThere were several of these put out by The Onion",
">\n\nThat's so funny, I don't know how I didn't see them before, I check out The Onion nearly every day",
">\n\nBecause he said he never read briefings and didn’t know anything unless it was read to him. How the US survived 4+ years of this douchebag as President…",
">\n\nIt's largely how we survived. He doesn't like working and he never really did that part of the job. He was too lazy and stupid to really fuck things up. We have accounts that aides would swap out proposed orders so he wouldn't sign them. He didn't notice until the story was leaked.",
">\n\nHowever, he has shown how easily institutions can be dismantled. The next GOP president will be hardworking, intelligent and understand how government works, he will dismantle the Republic in a single term and replace it with corporate autocracy. The Pompeos and Barrs already have a plan.",
">\n\nExactly. Your comment deserves more attention because this is the exact plan for republicans. Also i want to add they will plan on maneuvering into lifetime appointments for the president and his appointees regardless of the law. They want a authoritarianism style of rule and will stop at nothing to get it.",
">\n\nBut power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!",
">\n\nHe was a clueless POTUS without the brain necessary to handle the position. All he did was sit on his ass, watch Fox News, and order Diet Coke. It’s a wonder our country survived his four years of utter incompetence.",
">\n\nThe country survived, but tens of thousands died needlessly as a result of his incompetence and neglect of the ever growing opioid crisis and Covid, culminating in the largest drop in left expectancy the county had since WW2.",
">\n\nWe aren’t even a year above the avg life for the world anymore, and most 1st world European countries beat us in life expectancy.",
">\n\nWell all the school shootings bring that stat down...",
">\n\nHe could either by lying because he’s a liar, or he could be telling truth because he overlooked it because he’s a dumbass. I’m torn between both choices.",
">\n\nOr because he's senile and forgot",
">\n\nOr because he's a moron and thought they meant birthday balloons",
">\n\nGod dammit that should just be a sarcastic remark but it could actually be plausible",
">\n\nI’m thinking maybe there was a lot he was never informed of. Good thing too.",
">\n\nPut it in the bottom half of the briefing but don't bring it up at the meeting. The world is safer, and your ass is covered.",
">\n\nHey, maybe they used the ol' Rhodesia solution!",
">\n\n“According to a Florida Republican,” is all you need to know.",
">\n\nFlorida Man Yells at ~~Cloud~~ Balloon",
">\n\nWow, if no one in the Trump administration knew about these balloons at the time, it goes to show just how incompetent they were.\nUnless, as is most likely, they did know, and they just let it happen. Maybe that's how Ivanka got those patents.\nAlso, \"fake disinformation\"... Is that going to be his new catch phrase instead of \"fake news\"?\nThe GOP is beyond useless.",
">\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.",
">\n\n\nAs opposed to real disinformation maybe.\n\n... So \"fake disinformation\" = real information?\nIf we're following the double-negative rule and all...",
">\n\n\"They don't think it be like it is, but it do.\"",
">\n\nLet’s see. Either:\nThe Pentagon, the headquarters for the Department of Defense which is responsible for all areas of national security and the armed forces, decided not to tell the the most powerful man in America and Command in Chief, about a foreign country sending a remotely piloted aircraft that could be a surveillance device into their airspace that’s flying across civilian populations and potential high level intelligence infrastructure. \nOr, they did tell him and they’re once again adding to a mountain of lies, which probably has a summit about the same altitude as the balloon.\nOn three occasions…",
">\n\nThat’s not the summit … that’s the base camp! 😆",
">\n\nNot like he really cared. Doubt he even knew what day it was without the tv telling him because his favorite reality shows weren’t on.",
">\n\nThey would have had to draw balloons and a diagram for tRump to understand!",
">\n\nAnd then he would draw boobs on the balloons with his Sharpie, just like he did with Hurricane Dorian.",
">\n\nMore like he got the briefings but didn't pay attention or care. The idiot needed briefings to be like reading a picture book",
">\n\nAnd if he didn’t do his job relative to the balloons during his presidency then what other jobs didn’t he do because he didn’t care or didn’t listen¿",
">\n\nCovid for starters 🤣, ensuring a peaceful transition of power after losing the election and court challenges, those are pretty big by themselves, do you need more, user bunch of numbers???",
">\n\nOkay, but that’s worse. They get that that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nTrump didn't get informed about a lot of things because everyone knew he was dumb and crazy.\nFor example, Kash Patel pretended to be a Ukraine expert for the WH. The actual Ukraine expert got edged out because Trump had already met Kash and Trumps handlers didn't want to confuse him.\nThat's how you treat a child or a geriatric entering his second childhood as senility sets in. That's how they treated Trump.",
">\n\nSo he is either not a leader, or he's an incompetent leader",
">\n\nTranslation: Trump slept through the PDB for 4 years straight.",
">\n\n\"And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.\" \nAccording to Rep Michael Waltz. Who was a fresh congressman in 2019. And only has anonymous sources for his claim. And those anonymous sources would not necessarily know anything about what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on.\nIt’s incredible how bad journalism has become.",
">\n\nYou are right. I read the article, unlike most of the commenters in this thread, and it left so many obvious questions unanswered.",
">\n\nBullshit. He just wasn't paying attention.",
">\n\nFucking Liar...",
">\n\nIt was probably kept from him so he wouldn't throw ketchup on the wall and try to nuke the balloons and china right after.\nWith his lack of functional intelligence I assume there were several people deciding what he should know and what he shouldn't.",
">\n\nTrump was not a competent Commander in Chief.",
">\n\nIn the wise words of Chidi: Okay, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?",
">\n\nIt was probably in the intel briefings that he didn't find important.",
">\n\nSo more gross negligence from the Trump Administration.....",
">\n\nDid any one expect\nHim to be honest",
">\n\nSome of his followers think he's never told a lie. He just jokes and kids a lot. In fairness they think the Bible is literal and ignores all those contradictions too.",
">\n\nHe said he always knew more than the generals.",
">\n\nDidn’t tell him because he would’ve gone to war or tried to nuke the balloon",
">\n\nMemo must have gotten lost in the swamp.",
">\n\nNo other president ever had bigger beauty fuller spy balloons",
">\n\nTrump was probably too busy watching FOX and making sure they were singing his praises, than to be bothered by a Chinese spy balloon.",
">\n\nIf he would’ve found out, what are the chances he would’ve bull in a China shop’ed us into WW3 (no pun intended). Maybe his handlers knew better.",
">\n\nHim not being informed is not the gotcha this congressman thinks it is.",
">\n\nThere isn’t a large enough number for the amount of stuff trump isn’t informed about. The man is a literal clown in a suit. Evades paying taxes, lies about everything, and acts like a spoiled 16 year old.",
">\n\nYou gave him an extra 10 years he didn’t deserve.",
">\n\nMy guess is they tried to tell him he either did not read the daily memo or refused to listen because it did not interest him at the moment. Both things he routinely did during security briefings he would often be paying attention to tv or talking over people about his latest grievance.",
">\n\nNever informed or can’t read",
">\n\nLook, Representative Michael Waltz - Florida Republican, when you claim \"Trump Admin national security officials\" weren't informed by the Pentagon you create a problem.\nTrump supposedly rebuilt the military in those 4 years, and the Pentagon unless I'm mistaken is part of the military...\nSo either Trump is a liar, those 'officials' were liars/incompetent, or the Pentagon had not informed the Trump administration because the US military didn't trust the Trump Administration...\nWhich aligns perfectly with him saying he didn't trust the FBI/CIA/CDC/etc. and instead preferred US adversaries.",
">\n\nGood point",
">\n\nBy \"never informed\" he means tldr.",
">\n\nSo he either didn’t read the briefings, or they didn’t tell him because they were afraid he would flip the lid off the big red button lmao",
">\n\n“Why would they spy when I sold them everything they wanted to know?”",
">\n\nI believe they didn’t tell him. Also doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…",
">\n\nChina was just looking at all the property they have bought up in the US",
">\n\nI’m hoping there was a lot of info that intelligence services sat on because they didn’t trust anyone in the Trump administration.",
">\n\nthats cause the adults didnt trust trump with anything.",
">\n\nSure, that's credible.",
">\n\nIt was in his intel report, sadly he dropped his hamberder right on it",
">\n\nWell they probably figured he would try to nuke it while over American territory.",
">\n\nYeah, it was common knowledge you slept through the intel briefings trump.",
">\n\nIt’s not in the Pentagon’s budget to make a pop-up book for Trump to flip through on daily national security threats",
">\n\nRealizing he was potentially compromised, I suspect there were a few things he wasn’t told.",
">\n\nI seem to remember something about trump not reading the daily briefings like the real presidents do. \nchoosing to not read the brief is not the same as “they didn’t tell me”.",
">\n\nFlorida Republican lies for his Messiah Trump.",
">\n\nLet's take a step back here:\nHow does Waltz know Trump was not informed? He wasn't part of the White House staff.\nHe has no way of knowing for sure what he is claiming. He is making hearsay claims. They hold literally no merit.",
">\n\nWell, if the reports are true, they knew and didn’t do or say anything, or didn’t know. \nSeems like this is damage control more than accusatory, though doesn’t look good either way.",
">\n\nBullshit. And if that's true how fucking embarrassing.",
">\n\nI barely knew my military.",
">\n\nLies lies sweet sounding lies. But we all know better.",
">\n\nI call bullshit.",
">\n\nYeah sure he didn't lol, of course you guys would say that, I swear you think we're stupid..",
">\n\nAlso maybe officials didn't trust him to not blab about this shit or thowout some Willey coyote BS plan that would distract from real work.",
">\n\nHe preferred crayons and connect the dots over briefings",
">\n\nIf I'm in a job, and people don't tell me stuff bc they think im too much of an idiot and would react poorly, i'd try to correct that image immediately. Trump still doesn't understand everyone thought he was a fucking fool and he was likely the reason he wasn't told, if indeed he wasn't.",
">\n\nYeah I would probably be too embarrassed and quit lol. If that’s the case there’s no way I should be in that position.",
">\n\nBrought up in all the security meetings he skipped I guess….",
">\n\nHe was such a weak president that his own pentagon didn't tell him about spy balloons?",
">\n\nBelievable",
">\n\nEasy, he saw it and threw it away. If it’s not in twitter, it’s not worth his attention. He was informed but got negligent to care",
">\n\nNot the great excuse they think it is.",
">\n\nHurry Donald we need you to play dumb!",
">\n\nThere's no playing involved here",
">\n\nAnd you think this absolves you Donny-boy?",
">\n\nThey needed to include his name, as often as possible in the briefings, so he would stay focused reading them. What a piece of shit",
">\n\nMore like “never bothered to read” threat intelligence reports or anything that was put in front of him that was longer than the length of a tweet…",
">\n\nThat or the pentagon didn’t trust him with that information 😂",
">\n\nMaybe if he had paid attention to his dailies….",
">\n\nSo that means he was briefed about it in person twice a day for half a month.",
">\n\nThat probably saved us from nuking a balloon over Nebraska.",
">\n\nThis sounds like a \"scandal\" of EPIC proportions.\nI look forward to the testimony under oath from Trump-appointed intel officials about this failure related to national security.\nI'm sure that the Republican House will get on that after their \n-checks notes- \nthird investigation into Hunter Biden's dick pics.",
">\n\nonce again proving that the GOP is more concerned with what's in people's pants than actually putting the country first.",
">\n\nBecause they treated him like a child and decided it was safer to keep information from him.",
">\n\nexactamundo. didn't that even come out? didnt kelly withhold things from dumpster donnie all the time? simply because donald wasn't cognitively up to speed to comprehend them.",
">\n\nTrump was/is a walking national threat.",
">\n\nI don't know what the fuck Merrick Garland is taking his sweet ass time about now.",
">\n\nThat tends to happen when you never attend security briefings.",
">\n\nWhy would they bother to try? It wasn't about him.",
">\n\nThe Pentagon and the IC learned early on that briefing Trump was pointless. Talking to Trump is like talking to a mirror reflection of a wall.",
">\n\nThe Toddler Defense: he’s too stupid to have known better? That’s why it’s not his fault, you see. No, we don’t regret giving this man the nukes.",
">\n\nIt's possible - not unreasonable to hold back potentially sensitive information from someone who suggesting nuking a hurricane. \nBut as mentioned, what's way more likely is that he was informed and just wasn't paying attention or didn't read it. Guy doesn't have a lot of mental overhead.",
">\n\nTrump is on record saying he believed Putin over our IC about Russian election interference. He badmouths the CIA and others in our intelligence community all the time. Trump had a bank account in China while President and pays most of his taxes there. He was most likely briefed on the overflights but chose to believe Jinping instead.",
">\n\nThey were probably mentioned in those worthless intelligence briefings you didn’t waste time reading.",
">\n\nMost likely just didn't listen",
">\n\nYou’re telling me that the intelligence community kept information from a chief executive that had been saber rattling for war with China since before his election during a pandemic he was trying to blame on them?\nI envy those who hear the tale of their heroism decades from now when it can be safely told.",
">\n\nWhy is the argument always that Trump was too stupid to pay attention? It is not a good argument. Either the entire DOD was incompotent, or Trump couldn't appoint a good Secretary of Defense. In all cases, he's the president and those problems rise to the top.",
">\n\nIIRC, Trump needed his daily briefing to be one page or less and include pictures. Very possible that some key information was left off his briefings because they weren't able to fit in that page.",
">\n\nBullshit. Just because he decided to watch Fox News instead of reading his briefings does not mean they didn't inform him.",
">\n\nNo, it doesn’t. It would have been a regional decision made by competent officials who understood the level of threat and understood that telling Trump was much more dangerous,",
">\n\nYes, the usual - \"I was joking.\"",
">\n\nWho’s on first? ⚾️",
">\n\nHe would ordered the military to nuke it or something if they had told him",
">\n\nThe only question is why is this a discussion about his thinking process. He is not worthy of this discussion.",
">\n\nI’m pretty sure this balloon only got the attention at the level that it did was because the public was aware of it and it became a subject of conversation on the cable news networks. If that wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we would have just continued to track and observe it and not have bothered to shoot it down. \nShooting it down seems like an action we were forced into because of the news coverage it was getting.",
">\n\nI agree that’s a possibility. Not sure how much difference there is between a surveillance balloon at 60 thousand feet and a spy satellite, but we sure have several,of the latter. Will the Chinese decide to take out one of those?",
">\n\nYou know, you don’t have to worry about divulging classified information or advertising dysfunction within the national security apparatus to our global rivals if you’re just making shit up out of whole cloth in order to win the media cycle…",
">\n\nPlease",
">\n\nWhy tell the buffoon about Chinese balloons when he’d probably just order it to be nuked?",
">\n\nWhat kind of loser President isn’t informed about spy balloons over his fucking airspace.",
">\n\nTrump",
">\n\nYes, the commander in chief of the armed forces would never have been informed about a foreign military object entering US airspace. \nThere sadly are enough Americans that will believe this",
">\n\nWhat evidence do you have that it was a foreign MILITARY Object?\nNone.",
">\n\nImagine if he had been told, he would have put on a big ass show and make us look ridiculous.",
">\n\nIf true, probably was a good idea not to inform “hey can we nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else” Donald Trump.",
">\n\nI guarantee you he was informed. He wasn't listening to his intelligence briefings. He was too busy watching TV.",
">\n\nWe know that the Donald isn’t familiar with fact checking. He’s just so pathetic!",
">\n\nSomeone popped his balloon .",
">\n\nEven if he actually did read a briefing and saw the word “balloon” you know he it was something birthday related and since it wasn’t his he moved on to executive time",
">\n\nlol, this was my theory when it came out it happened during his admin too:\n\"If you're a reasonable career military official, and you've seen what a frothing mess some of the political people in that admin were every time China was mentioned, would you keep quiet on something that was probably as inconsequential then as this was now? This one only blew up because people spotted it and Biden has created a protective dome of Boring around the continental US.\"",
">\n\nThey probably didn't include pictures of the balloon, so he didn't read it.",
">\n\n“We can’t tell that orange POS or he’ll start WW3”",
">\n\nEven if they had, he probably would have tried to blame it on Hillary Clinton's emails.",
">\n\nThat’s what happens when you ignore your intelligence briefings",
">\n\nAh. The man who killed the daily natsec brief and forced staff to sprinkle his name into it just so he’d pay a little attention",
">\n\nAlways nice to see reporting of statements by liars of what other liars told them. Very informative.",
">\n\nIt was in those briefs he never bothered to look at.",
">\n\nThe talking point before the balloon was shot down was, would this have happened under Trump, in other words, would China have dared done this?\nWhether he knew or not, yeah, they totally had no problem with this antic during his time.",
">\n\nHe only believes information from his “international” handlers",
">\n\nIt's a well known fact that Trump didn't read his daily intelligence briefings and really liked graphs.",
">\n\nIt wasn’t shown to him in a graph made with a sharpie so he didn’t pay attention.",
">\n\nTrump-backed election denier Mike Waltz said Trump was “never informed” but Biden is incompetent and mismanaged this? Say it ain’t so! I, for one, am shocked /s",
">\n\nVery concerning.",
">\n\nWith his lack of impulse control, I'm sure there were a lot of things DoD, DHS, HS etc. never told Trump. I shudder to think what we will learn in coming months and years about what happened while Trump was out golfing or tweeting in front of the tv.",
">\n\nIs “fake disinformation”—information?",
">\n\nIf we believed literally everything he said, he would essentially be a perfect human being that has never made a single error ever. \nHe’s stated he’s the richest person, the physically strongest person, the smartest person, the most honest person, the best athlete etc etc.",
">\n\nI bet it was in one of the thousands of classified documents he did not take or read to his home",
">\n\nProbably in one of those daily briefings he just ignored.",
">\n\nOr maybe, this is why it helps to pay the fuck attention in national security briefings!",
">\n\nJust because he wasn't paying attention when they told him doesn't mean he was never informed.",
">\n\nTrump maybe: they kept telling me chinese baboons were flying over America and I think gee we got the worst intelligence because Chinese baboons don’t fly or even have wings Only the ones from the Florida Disney area do",
">\n\nI put this perspective on it. Do you risk telling him and have him overreact and make yet another off the cuff decision that makes everything worse based upon the fact that he never listened to his advisors because he was obviously “the smartest person alive” or do you monitor it and let the professionals make assessments?",
">\n\nSo by admitting that Trump was never informed implies that either he was incompetent or his national security officials were.",
">\n\nYou know, I'm inclined to believe him either because the Pentagon knew he would attempt to do something stupid or that it was briefing that he never bothered to pay attention to.",
">\n\nRepublicans can’t help themselves; they love carrying water for Trump",
">\n\nNot sure this is quite the exoneration Trump thinks it is.",
">\n\nOh I HIGHLY doubt that. There’s probably a multitude of documentation that proves otherwise and he was probably out golfing anyway. This just in : DONALD TRUMP IS A LIAR",
">\n\n\"president\" trump.",
">\n\nIf they didn’t, they were probably worried he’d try to nuke the fuckin thing.",
">\n\nHow would a certain Congress member know that exactly?",
">\n\nwell he probably would have wanted to Nuke it once it was over a hurricane.",
">\n\nI would’ve thought they wouldn’t have told him about it because he would have wanted to launch a nuke at it. He never got to play with all the military toys he wanted to, so he’s bitter about it now.",
">\n\nlol trump's intelligence briefing reports were a joke. i'm sure someone could have included balloon incursion reports in them but his reports were more concerned with \"owning the libs\"",
">\n\nWould have been a report with a weather balloon drawn in crayon and a yellow sun with lines before trump would even glance at it.",
">\n\nsharpie haha",
">\n\nI'm going to be this is going to be another easily disproven lie from the lying ass Republican party that ultimately won't matter to the absolutely stupid American electorate.",
">\n\nI guess those morning briefings he ignored got so frustrating that they started leaving info out?",
">\n\nNever informed, or napped through the briefing?",
">\n\nMy bet? The military was probably scared Trump would try to shoot them down with nukes over the U.S.",
">\n\nStupid treason president - this SOB I’m sure sold our Top Secrets!",
">\n\nbullshit",
">\n\nSpy satellites & balloons pass over constantly. We are acting like this is some new espionage. The only reason Biden had it shot down was to shut up the Faux crowd.",
">\n\nA big lie to protect an even bigger liar!",
">\n\nWhy would the pentagon inform this idiot of anything",
">\n\nWell, they tried. They didn't draw it with crayons, who knew words would be so hard",
">\n\nThat’s a lie!! He knew!",
">\n\nIt's from Newsweek aka The Enquirer lite.",
">\n\nBy saying he wasn't informed admits they knew it was being done. Also, there are people who knew we were being spied on by China and they did nothing? They allowed them to keep doing it? Since they did nothing can one guess that perhaps they WANTED the U.S to be spied upon? Do you think maybe there was money changing hands? Do you think maybe there was...collusion?",
">\n\nOr the most simple answer: the president was corrupt and uninterested in geopolitics. \nAlso, it’s more likely the balloons are malfunctioning and the Chinese aren’t purposely sending over slow moving, easily visible spy balloons to spy on what exactly? 70 year old missile silos the entire globe has known about?",
">\n\nThats kind of what I would expect when you staff the dod with a bunch of sycophants",
">\n\nLies.",
">\n\nWhy should he be informed?",
">\n\nIn an ideal world, he should be informed because he's the most powerful man in the world and the head of the US military.\nIn a pragmatic world, he should not have been told because he would have had absolutely no idea what to do about it.",
">\n\nHe didn’t know as in “when should we shoot the balloons?” “What balloons?”",
">\n\nI thought you meant that a spongebob square pants balloon escaped from the mall.",
">\n\nAmerica has a joke of a government. Fork out the money if all you're going to say is leave.",
">\n\nWhy didn't the press pushed about it at the time?",
">\n\nEaster Hay Toupee",
">\n\nI am starting to wonder when President Biden was informed about the balloons since there were a few days after they had flown into USA airspace before he told discussed shooting them down. I think the Pentagon should be questioned why they were not shot down when they were over the Alaska. They should have notified him immediately and I suspect they did not.",
">\n\nThe story I heard was that Biden was told immediately and he immediately authorized shooting it down - but the Pentagon didn’t want to get anyone on the ground hurt. That doesn’t ring 100% true to me - surely there wouldn’t have been anyone hurt if they shot it down over Alaska or parts of Montana?",
">\n\nIt came into our airspace on Saturday, January 28 but President Biden wasn’t briefed on it until Wednesday? If he was briefed on it sooner, he could have given the order to shoot it down sooner. He should have been given the option of shooting it down over the Alaskan islands. Why didn’t the Pentagon tell him about it immediately? Who made the decision to delay the briefing to our President? The American people should know how often our air space is violated and the President should definitely be informed.",
">\n\nI don’t know that any of your assumptions are true",
">\n\nSeems like people are going to blame the chinese spy balloons on Trump.",
">\n\nAnd why? Because he would have ordered them nuked.",
">\n\nSee Trump? There is a cost of lying constantly. Nobody believes either you or your toadies when you or they say anything.\nIn this case, since you already immediately claimed it never happened under your watch, your toadies are just backing you up. With every thing you say being a lie, I didn’t believe you to start with. Having your toadies chime isn’t doesn’t change that.\nIn this situation, the Pentagon would have been fully justified in not telling you anything, because they would have been afraid of what your stupid incompetent ass might have done. Whatever it was, there’s a 100% chance that it would have been the wrong thing to do - since everything you did was wrong.\nBut that’s kind of hard to believe - as long as the public didn’t know about it, you being to chicken to,do anything about it is much easier to believe.",
">\n\n\"If uhge Chinese balloons had entered the country during my administration, I would've invited them to Mar-A-Lago for dinner\".",
">\n\nWell of course not. He'd start talking crazy about war with China.",
">\n\nHow would this congressman know what Trump was or wasn’t briefed on?",
">\n\nHe had billions messages per day to be read (on twitter). A ballon?",
">\n\nI'll bet you my house that it was in one of his briefings.",
">\n\nBut...but...is it, maybe...erm...possible that the very, very (many people say) stable genius...doesn't tell the truth...just for this one time in his beautiful, great, incredible perfect life...?",
">\n\nOfficial memos he received loading………",
">\n\nNot informed because he didn't want to know? He was the Commander in Chief, it was his responsibility to know. (It was probably in his morning intel briefs that he didn't read).",
">\n\nBecause he would have told them to nuke it",
">\n\nThey're covering their tailpipes. It was widely reported at the time Trump didn't like to read.",
">\n\nIt's a little scary to think someone either doesn't relay important information or if they do, and they don't hear anything back they don't follow up.",
">\n\n(Smashing X to doubt)",
">\n\nHe knew by his phone calls to China\nChina \"Yes and before we end this call, we are flying spy balloons over your country\"\nTrump \"A spy balloon?\"\nChina \"The biggest balloon you'll ever see. It's going to be huge. We are going to gather lots of intelligence\"\nTrump \"Dont fly it over Florida or I'll shoot it with a nuke, oh by the way if you're looking for the nuke codes with that thing I can make it easier too and I have many secrets to share including UFO's.\"",
">\n\nI have a feeling these things are all over the place, only dragged out when serving a political purpose 🤡",
">\n\nRepresentative Michael Waltz, looks like you've got some work to do then. Either the military is lying and Congress should find out why, or they were extremely incompetent and they should find out why. You aren't in the minority dumbass, so if you're going to make some claim you now have the power to investigate and back it up.",
">\n\nDo you trust Trump, who paid more taxes in China than U.S., over the Pentagon? I know who I’d trust more",
">\n\nHe was not paying attention those days.",
">\n\n\"What, like a red balloon, you know I've had many people, good people, people who know balloons tell me the red one are the best, simply the best, and I should know! We should have more balloons.\"",
">\n\nIf a foreign country invades our air space, it would be more than just a line item on a briefing! There is no way Trump didn’t know!",
">\n\nIgnorance is not an excuse.",
">\n\nYes - it is a fact in his life.",
">\n\nThey likely thought he'd just automatically reach for the hot button.",
">\n\nBut he was \"informed\" he could not watch porn in the White House, that he got very clear.",
">\n\nTrump was too busy licking Putin’s scrotum to worry about Chinese balloons.",
">\n\nI’ll be honest weather balloons don’t really seem like they have any radar signature that’s just my opinion because they seem like they fly pretty high then planes, will all honestly I don’t know how it works but how can they spy on us that high",
">\n\nI feel like this is a good thing, don’t give morons nuclear codes.",
">\n\n“Mr President, there’s a Chinese balloon over Montana” Trump: “we have nukes right? Is this a chance to make the best, I mean the greatest explosion a president has ever exploded? A perfect explosion?” … they probably made the right call.",
">\n\nYea right",
">\n\nHonestly, i wouldn’t be surprised. Trump would have ordered them shot down and then through a series of increasingly stupid events provoked a war with china. I mean he already started a trade war which we lost. I don’t doubt Pentagon kept the info from him as a way of protecting the nation",
">\n\nWhy would he be?",
">\n\nWhy should he be? He has zero worthwhile input.",
">\n\nIs it supposed to be somehow better that he was ignorant of such things instead of just ignoring them?",
">\n\nPromote those Generals that kept this a secret from Dump.",
">\n\nMost of y’all will probably say that he was informed but just didn’t read the briefing.\nBut honestly, I believe that he wasn’t told. If he did know, surely he would have used this to breed fear during the 2020 election. This would have been advantageous because to the layperson, Trump was seen as “hard on China”. If there was one thing he was good at, it was motivating his base. This would have been a perfect opportunity to scare people into voting for him.",
">\n\nYou think? Really… no one told the president.!",
">\n\nI picture Trump watching SpongeBob while shushing whomever had to do the briefings.",
">\n\nIt was on a security briefing that didn't include his name in every paragraph, so he binned it.",
">\n\nCouldn't trust Chump",
">\n\nThis just begs the question, why.",
">\n\nHuh, wonder how he could have missed that... Perhaps he shouldn't have skipped his security briefings so often...",
">\n\nTrump “never paid attention to his security briefings” more like.",
">\n\nMaybe if Deputy Dipshit read his briefings once in a while, he would've known about it🙄",
">\n\nCircle the wagons, our brand is at risk!",
">\n\nHe and his enablers were all too busy trying to overthrow the election.",
">\n\nEvery time I see Trump say “nobody told me” or anything remotely to the tune of that, I think of him saying he didn’t know Lev Parnas or Jeffrey Epstein",
">\n\nBullshit",
">\n\nHe probably thought the Chinese sent him birthday balloons.",
">\n\nLets not gloss over the fact that the congressman would have no way of knowing what the president was and was not briefed on by the Pentagon on a day to day basis. Trump barely knew what he was being briefed on.",
">\n\nYes and he wasn't aware of the insurrection\nHe didn't know he was eating lunch with leader of the neo nazis\nAnd there are good kkk and white supremacists\nSame playbook lie lie lie and that's why the gop have a Santos problem",
">\n\nDon't tell him SHIT!!!",
">\n\nLike he would actually pay attention to anything else but himself."
] |
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