A New Jersey state legislator tore into White House spokesman John Kirby Thursday after hearing Kirby respond to a question on drone swarms seen over the Garden State for weeks.
The drones have appeared over the sky of New Jersey, in some cases flying in formation, in recent weeks, according to video footage obtained by the Daily Caller. “America Reports” co-host John Roberts asked Republican State Assemblyman Brian Bergen of New Jersey about Kirby’s claim during a White House press briefing that the sightings were of “manned aircraft that were being operated lawfully.”
“That guy is an idiot. That I can tell you right now. Because the colonel of the state police told the members of the state legislature that one of his helicopters was hovering above a six-foot wide drone, and he landed that helicopter because he felt unsafe for his pilots,” Bergen said. “I am a former Apache helicopter pilot and a member of the New Jersey state legislature, and I have seen these things in my own community. That guy, I don’t even know his name, who was on here a couple minutes ago, is a fool if he is going to say there is no issue.”
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“Well, he’s a former rear admiral in the U.S. Navy named John Kirby, so helicopter pilot against the admiral. Go ahead,” Roberts responded, with Bergen saying, “Well, go Army, beat Navy, that’s what I would say in this regard.”
Roberts compared the drones to the February 2023 overflight of a spy balloon across the United States, which the Chinese claimed was a civilian meteorological research platform that went off course. The balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina Feb. 4, 2023.
“We need people to take action. On the segment before I got here, somebody said it is impossible to track hundreds and hundreds of these drones for our state police. We don’t need to track hundreds or thousands, we only need to track one and find out who is at fault for one of these things,” Bergen told Roberts. “I’m telling you, it’s a big issue. I hope at the end of the day we find out that it was nothing, that it’s some commercial application being tested, and this is a big to-do about nothing, but right now, everybody, senators, assembly people, U.S. senators, are calling for action, and people are not making enough of a difference.”
“Before, the same gentleman you mentioned earlier, he said we are being resourced, the state was being resourced with this technology,” Bergen continued. “In the briefing that we were at, state police said they were going to be getting some new technology from the Department of Homeland Security to track these drones, and apparently it was supposed to determine what is a bird and a drone to make it easier to track. One of my colleagues – and this was yesterday – said when are you going to get that? They said within two days. Two days? We need it now.”
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