After it was shot down, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) anounced that they lost track of one of their balloons at the same time and location.
Perhaps as a Naval Officer, Admiral Kirby was hesitant to give undue praise to the Air Force.
Anyhow, Admiral Kirby was asked if our National Security Team had perhap overreacted a bit, when it deployed a $200 million F22 Raptor and a $600,000 sidewinder missle to interdict and destroy a $20 balloon launched by some junior high school geeks. Admiral Kirby proudly answered “Absolutely Not”
I remember that... big win for President Sniffer too... /s
WATCH: John Kirby Struggles to Name Biden Foreign Policy Achievement in 2023
JOEL B. POLLAK21 Dec 21, 2023
White House national security spokesman John Kirby struggled Thursday when asked to name the top foreign policy achievement for President Joe Biden in 2023.
During a briefing with reporters — the last of the year — Ed O’Keefe of CBS News asked Kirby to look back over the year and name the most important success.
Kirby waffled for a moment, saying that he was running out of time, and suggesting that Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wanted him to go.
“There’s a lot we’ve achieved in foreign policy … ” he began.
“You know, we’re running late, and I don’t want to belabor this,” he continued, saying that the answer would take 20 minutes.
Kirby eventually listed the “Quad” alliance in the Indo-Pacific, the Australian nuclear submarine deal, helping Ukraine hold Russia back, and helping Israel “put pressure on Hamas.”
(Former President Donald Trump actually formed the Quad alliance in 2017.)
Ultimately, he said that the top achievement was “shoring up alliances.”
“I think if I had to bucket into one thing, one of the most important things he’s done on the foreign policy front is shore up and revitalize our vast network of alliances and partnerships. No other nation in the world has that kind of a network at their disposal.”
Kirby said that Biden had taken the time to invest in relationships that “had been let lapse” by President Donald Trump.