Biden Slaps Down Trump and Explains the Mystery Drones
The president responded to Trump’s taunts by making his first public comments on the sightings.
Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty
President Joe Biden on Tuesday made his first public comments about recent reports of unexplained drone sightings in the northeast.
Asked by reporters what was behind the drones, Biden answered: “Nothing nefarious, apparently, but they’re checking it all out.” He added that authorities are “following this closely,” but so far there is “no sense of danger.”
Biden’s comments were the latest effort from his administration to reassure the public about the sightings. Lawmakers have called on the federal government to provide more answers, and conspiracy theories have spread online.
The Department of Energy and other officials have already shut down one theory linking the drone sightings to a supposed search for missing radioactive material.
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On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump nevertheless insisted at a press conference that “something strange is going on” and claimed government officials “don’t want to tell the people” what’s happening. “I think they’d be better off saying what it is,” Trump said. “Our military knows and our president knows, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense.”
But Biden administration and law enforcement officials have repeatedly addressed the concerns. National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told CNN Monday that the sightings over the East Coast “represent lawful, legal, commercial [and] hobbyist drones—even law enforcement drones,” which don’t pose a threat to the public.
A joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Defense Department, and the FBI separately said that over 5,000 drone sightings have been reported to authorities in recent weeks. The agencies found that the sightings to date “include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”
Over one million drones are lawfully registered with the FAA and “thousands” of them are in the skies of the U.S. on any given day, the statement said. “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast,” it added.
“There’s a lot of drones authorized to be up there,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “I think one started and they all got—everybody wanted to get in the deal.”
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