Gaslighting the public just doesn’t work anymore, but unfortunately, our elected officials haven’t caught up with that little detail.

Right now, America can’t stop talking about the drones flying over us with apparent impunity, even passing over military stations, the U.S. Capitol building and the White House. And, of course, social media is full of possible explanations. Aliens? China? Iran? Russia? U.S. military? Tech companies? Teenagers?

Look, I’m almost certain the drones aren’t aliens, because what self-respecting master race would travel across the universe to look down on us: fragile blobs of meat who waste our lives scrolling TikTok, filling our faces with Botox and wasting millions of dollars on the Hawk Tuah girl’s scam cryptocurrency? And if we are going to be invaded by this particular bottom-shelf TMZ-level form of alien life, we deserve whatever is coming to us.

That leaves a foreign entity — it wouldn’t be the first time Chinese technology was allowed to trespass American airspace — or some domestic actor, whether it be the military, private industry or a bunch of guys pulling the best prank of all time.

But regardless of the cause, let’s not miss the actual scandal here: that the Biden administration is utterly impotent or clueless … or both.

Let’s consider the first option: that these are unsanctioned drone flights. That means that the federal government — which has access to more military technology than any other civilization in human history — is just watching this happen and being seen to do nothing, projecting weakness that is like blood in the water to our adversaries.

Now, let’s consider the second option: that these are sanctioned drone flights. They could be military exercises or some sort of private project or part of security preparations for Donald Trump’s presidency. But if the federal government does know what is going on, and doesn’t want to cause a panic, why are they doing everything in their power to fuel a panic?

After New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy gave up after exhausting his 50/50, “phone a friend” and “ask the audience” options, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby stepped in to give the least helpful answer ever: that the Biden administration has not found “anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risks over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”

“We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircrafts, helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones,” Kirby said.

How reassuring …

For an administration that has built much of its shaky legacy on fighting so-called misinformation and disinformation, this latest debacle is like catnip for online conspiracy theorists. But in this case, can you even blame them? The government lied about COVID, lied about Russia, lied about the Chinese spy balloons, and now they’re lying again. We just don’t know how or why.

The fact is that it’s on the government to rebuild public trust, and with drones hovering over the White House like a budget “Independence Day,” public trust is in the dust.

“Nothing to see here” doesn’t cut it in a world of social media when every American knows they are being lied to.

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