Far-right Georgia US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia drew a baseless comparison between the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon and United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed into Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 11 September, 2001.
US military officials contend that it was safer for American fighter jets to shoot down the massive balloon once it crossed into accessible waters rather than shoot it out of the sky while it was potentially a risk to people and buildings below.
During an event in Idaho over the weekend, Ms Greene called the reasoning from the Pentagon “pathetic, absolutely pathetic” and “a bunch of bull****”.
She compared the size of the balloon, which was roughly the size of three buses, to a plane – specifically, the United Airlines jetliner, one of four aircraft hijacked on 9/11. Passengers prevented hijackers from reaching their target in Washington DC by downing the craft in a field, killing all on board.
“Remember that? It didn’t kill anybody on the ground. Killed everyone on board. But it didn’t kill anyone on the ground,” Ms Greene said in remarks captured by Patriot Takes. “So they want to tell all of us that it was too risky to take down that Chinese spy balloon over rural Idaho or Montana, or any of these other states, or Alaska? They’re liars.”
She suggested that President Joe Biden deliberately kept the balloon above US airspace because he “sold out to China.”
“You can only see it two ways,” she said, offering up three. “Either they’re liars or they’re cowards or our president is sold out to China. You know what? I’ll go with all three.”
The Chinese balloon was flying at about 60,000 feet, well above the range of altitudes for commercial airliners, while two other much-smaller unidentified objects brought down by American fighter jets were reported travelling at about 40,000 feet, posing a risk to civilian aircraft, according to the Pentagon. A third object above Lake Huron was at 20,000 feet.
The US military was able to protect against the balloon’s ability to collect any intelligence, which was “relatively straight-forward since we knew where the balloon was,” Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, told a Senate panel last week.
US defense officials told the panel that shooting the massive balloon at first sight near Alaska also risked losing salvageable debris – and valuable intelligence – in frozen or deep-water areas where recovery operations would be impossible.
The waters off the coast of South Carolina, where the balloon was shot down by an F-22 on 4 February, are roughly 50 feet. US Navy and FBI investigators are searching the area. An unmanned underwater vehicle is combing the sea floor, and defense officials have reported that “significant” debris was recovered.
Ms Greene’s latest controversial comments invoking the terror attacks are not the first; in 2018, before she was elected to the House of Representatives, she claimed that there was no evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon.
In 2021, House lawmakers voted to remove her from committees after resurfaced social media posts and statements appeared to show her supporting QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories and political violence. She told lawmakers that 9/11 “absolutely happened”.
With Republican control of the House and the election of GOP leader Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, Ms Greene was selected to join the House Homeland Security and House Oversight Committee.
Fellow congressman Ted Lieu shared her latest remarks “without comment”.
The Independent has requested comment from the congresswoman’s office.
