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Sunday, March 5, 2023
CNS Uses Balloon Incident To Attack China, Bash Biden
Topic: CNSNews.com

When a Chinese spy balloon was found to be flying over the U.S., CNSNews.com's instincts kicked in -- fearmonger about Israel and blame Biden. The first CNS article referencing the balloon, a Feb. 3 piece by Susan Jones, did the former:

As a Chinese spy balloon drifts over the United States, there are growing concerns down below about companies with ties to Communist China buying property and exerting influence all over the USA.

And it's not just American farmland: "Chinese-backed private equity are buying up boarding schools, private schools, and secondary education all over Florida, New York, California, from what we can tell," Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday night.

CNS actually did what could be considered actual news articles on the balloon's progress:

When the balloon was ultimately shot down, CNS did an anonymously written article about it, followed by an article from Patrick Goodenough on China complaining about it as well as a timeline compiled by Jones. After that, it was Biden-bashing time with several articles featuring Republicans spouting off:

That talking point on how there were no Chiese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president was an important one for CNS to promote -- but it didn't age well. When it was revealed that there were, in fact, Chinese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president, A Feb. 7 article by Goodenough made sure to blame anyone but Trump:

The head of the U.S. military command responsible for countering airborne threats to North America said on Monday that it had not detected Chinese spy balloons that reportedly flew over the United States prior to last week’s incident.

Instead, those previous incursions had been discovered “after the fact” by the intelligence community using “additional means of [information] collection,” said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command. He did not elaborate.

According to an official transcript of an off-camera briefing to Pentagon reporters, VanHerck attributed the fact that NORAD had not detected those earlier balloons to “a domain awareness gap.”

A senior defense official asserted at the weekend that, before last week’s incursion, Chinese surveillance balloons had flown briefly over the continental U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration, and at least once at the beginning of the Biden administration.

So important was it for CNS to not blame Trump for any of this that Susan Jones wrote a second version of this very same talking point a few hours later:

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, told reporters on Monday the United States military failed to detect four earlier balloons sent either toward U.S. air space or into it.

"So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsible to -- responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.

"And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go in further detail," VanHerck said at an off-camera briefing.

Oddly, Jones did not name Trump during her article, presumably to avoid having to admit these incidents did, in fact, ocur during his presidency.

An article by Melanie Arter did surprisingly give Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg space to explain that it would have been a bad idea to shoot down the balloon over populated U.S. land since the debris field it acreated when it was shot down off the South Carolina coast was seven miles long. But that was followed by an article from her featuring Ted Cruz (who employs the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey) giving backhanded praise to Biden for shooting the balloon down but having "allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States" before doing so -- with no mention of the debris field it left.

This was followed by more attack articles, some featuring Democrats and some pushing more China-bashing:

The lone direct response to all of this that CNS allowed was an article by Jones quoting Biden saying that "any suggestion that he was derelict in his duty to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon before it traversed the United States is 'a bizarre notion.'"

'CNS opinion pieces -- which are ultimately not that different from its "news" coverage -- also attacked Biden over the balloon incident. James Carafano of the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranted in a Feb. 6 commentary:

What’s next? Could this happen again? Absolutely. I don’t think the Chinese are afraid of this administration.

The problem here, however, is much bigger than balloons. We need to understand what’s behind the balloons—what China is up to—and put a stop to it.

How concerning is this overall? This is a big problem because this is a big signal the Biden administration has no clue how to handle the China threat. It appears about as competent securing our airspace as it does securing our border.

A Feb. 8 column by Jeffrey obsessed over Chinese treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the country, which he called a "genocide," trying to fold the balloon story into it:

President Biden's approach toward the government of Communist Chinese has changed — at least cosmetically — since that regime flew a spy balloon over the United States last week.

Secretary Blinken announced he was canceling his trip to China.

But will Biden now do anything about America's massive and mounting trade deficit with this regime that Biden's own administration says is engaging in genocide?

This is pretty much the only context in which CNS will ever talk about Muslims in a sympathetic way.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:45 AM EST
Updated: Monday, March 6, 2023 12:31 AM EST

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