Former defense secretary: yes, Trump would have shot down the Chinese spy balloon

Former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller challenged several of the major claims being made about the Chinese spy ballon that recently entered US airspace during a podcast interview Monday with The Spectator World. 

Miller joined The District podcast to discuss the Chinese spy balloon and his new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield and the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies.

The Biden administration shot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday after it had been floating across the United States for nearly a week. Following its destruction, administration officials claimed that other Chinese spy balloons had entered the US “at least three times” during the Trump administration.

Miller, who served in the final few months of the Trump administration, confirmed that he was not aware of and was never briefed on the presence of any spy balloons during his time at the Pentagon.

“To make it clear, I’m not doing some sort of Washington, DC-insider tap dance where you say something, but it’s very lawyerly. I’m just telling you brutally, honestly, [I] never heard of such a thing either in the United States or any of our facilities worldwide,” Miller said.

Other Trump administration officials have also denied knowledge of any spy balloon incidents, including former national security advisors John Bolton and Robert O’Brien, former defense secretary Mark Esper, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former directors of intelligence John Ratcliffe and Ric Grenell.

Following these refutations, the anonymous Biden officials claimed that the intelligence pointing to three Trump-era incidents was “discovered after” the former president left office. Miller asserted that the idea that the intelligence community didn’t know about the balloons until recently “sounds pretty crazy.”

“I’ve been studying all this all day long, and I’m just getting more confused as it goes,” Miller said. “So there was this narrative that the Trump administration knew all about this, only to find out, well, no, it happened during the Trump administration, but the intelligence community didn’t find out… until we left office. So I can’t figure out what’s going on. It sounds pretty crazy to me.”

Miller questioned how the balloons could have gone undetected with the billions of dollars spent on US national defense, citing the sophisticated and expensive “sensors and satellites and radars” meant to track such aircraft. He added that he believes Trump would have taken swift action if he were aware of spy balloons flying over the US during his time in office.

“I don’t want to speak for President Trump because he can speak for himself, but I guarantee you, if he was told that we had a Chinese spy balloon cross-transiting the United States, he would have taken action in a little different way.”

When asked if this meant that Trump would have shot down the balloon immediately, Miller said, “I can’t speak for President Trump, but yeah.”

The anonymous Biden officials have been tight-lipped on the specifics surrounding the supposed Trump-era balloons, but are supposedly offering briefings to high-level Trump officials about the incidents. Miller says he has not yet received a call with such an offer.

“I’ll believe it when I see it. I can’t wait. I doubt they’ll be calling me. I was never supposed to be part of their little cabal,” Miller said. “I’ll be really curious if they reach out. I’ll be surprised.”