Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson reacted to the mysterious drones appearing over New Jersey in recent weeks by wondering if they were part of a “fake alien invasion” being staged to “steal Trump’s swagger.”
Beginning late last month, large drones — some as large as six feet in diameter — have been seen nightly across New Jersey from dusk until nearly midnight. According to the state lawmakers briefed on the matter this week, the sightings have ranged from four to 180 per night.
Even though the state’s governor says there’s no public safety threat, the appearance of the drones continues to raise alarms in the state, especially since local officials have said that the flying objects have eluded radar detection and quickly fly away when approached by police helicopters. Concerns that the drones appear to be surveilling the state’s infrastructure have caused some members of Congress to worry that a foreign adversary may be involved.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told Fox News on Wednesday morning that he believed the drones were from an Iranian “mothership” that was hovering “off the East Coast of the United States of America.” The Pentagon later refuted Van Drew’s claim, saying there “is not any truth to that” and there is “no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”
Latching onto Van Drew’s assertions and other right-wing media figures’ claims about the drones, Johnson theorized that this was all part of a false flag operation meant to distract the nation from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
“Now some people, Mark Dice and others, have said… what’s gonna happen is they’re gonna stage a fake alien invasion to try and — this is just one of their dirty tricks that they’re gonna use to try and punk Trump and to try and steal Trump’s swagger and create an emergency that’s gonna take away from Trump’s agenda,” the pro-Trump podcaster breathlessly declared on Wednesday.
Johnson, who earlier this year was revealed to have been duped by the Kremlin to peddle Russian propaganda, went on to compare the drone sighting to the COVID-19 pandemic, which he suggested was also a staged event meant to damage Trump and his administration.
“You can’t cut government spending, right, if the aliens invade. Right?! It’s creepy, man,” Johnson exclaimed. “Could anybody have predicted COVID? Like, they clearly cooked that up in a lab just for this time, just for this moment, ladies and gentlemen.”
While the lab leak theory about the origins of the coronavirus is still a hotly debated topic between scientists and intelligence agencies, there isn’t any evidence that COVID-19 was engineered and unleashed on the world for the sole purpose of removing Trump from office in 2020.
That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists and far-right provocateurs from claiming for years now that the virus was nothing but a hoax meant to damage the president-elect, prompting Republican voters to disproportionately believe health disinformation and reject vaccines.
Having earlier this year described Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce as a “psyop,” Johnson also insisted on Wednesday that the “American government is in control of alien technology” and the drone sightings were part of a “massive psyop” meant to “destabilize and incoming Trump administration.”
Additionally, Johnson stated that the so-called deep-state psychological operation was also part of a larger plan to keep “government spending forever” and to eliminate DOGE, the proposed meme-based government efficiency advisory committee co-chaired by Trump’s “first buddy” Elon Musk.
