Podcaster Joe Rogan cast fresh doubts on Tuesday regarding President Donald Trump’s explanation for the mysterious drone flights over New Jersey and other states last year.
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment via email after office hours on Tuesday.
Why It Matters
Officials at local and federal levels were baffled for weeks by reports of mystery drone sightings spotted in Northeast states like New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, starting in November 2024.
Residents of Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts and California also reported seeing drones overhead, raising concerns about security threats and speculation of foreign involvement.
Federal officials repeatedly sought to calm public anxieties, affirming no evidence of foreign involvement or ill intent behind the sightings. Nevertheless, conspiracy theories ran rampant online and among lawmakers.
What To Know
Before returning to the White House for his second term, Trump had demanded that the Biden administration explain the mystery drones. Days after his inauguration, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a brief statement from Trump saying the drones “were not the enemy” and “were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons.”
Rogan questioned that explanation. “I don’t know what that was, you know, because they were going to tell us, supposedly, and they kind of just didn’t,” he said on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
“You can’t discount the idea that they’re not telling you the truth but they might have been ours too, that‘s the problem. They might have been someone else’s. There’s a bunch of different possibilities, right, and all of them, they don’t have to be truthful about it. If it’s a national security issue, it would probably be better they weren’t truthful, because people would freak out.
“It’s also the potential that they are ours and they did them on purpose to see how people would respond, so that’s possible too.
“It’s also possible that they’re not ours and there’s someone else whose flexing on us, and they’re doing it in a way where, they’re showing you we have technological superiority, our stuff is way more advanced than yours, and if there would be a culprit in that regard, in my mind, it would be China,” Rogan said.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek in December that he was “not clear” on the issue involving the drones in the U.S. and near U.S. bases in Europe.
What People Are Saying
Rogan, also on his podcast: “China is so ahead of the United States in drone technology.”
Trump, on Truth Social in December: “Mystery Drone Sightings all over the country. Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT.”
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