Crisis Management 101

NEW: NewsNation reporter says his entire view of the New Jersey drones has changed after he witnessed 50 of them flying from the ocean.

The drones are reportedly the x 8-10 feet wide and can’t be detected because they don’t give off heat.

“I gotta be honest here. You know when this… pic.twitter.com/2tVGasw2bc

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 14, 2024

The X post above embeds footage from NewsNation reporter Rich McHugh. showing various drone sightings he and his cameraman captured in his neighborhood in Monmouth County, NJ. This is some of the most explicit video we've seen so far of this phenomenon. From his narration, he locates his position a few miles west of the naval ammunition depot at Earle, NJ, which is at Sandy Hook, and he says there's a body of water behind him, which would be Raritan Bay, which is also adjacent to Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens in New York City.

This suggests to me that he's standing near the west end of Raritan Bay, around maybe South Amboy in Monmouth County, and if the bay is behind him, he's looking south. He says he and his cameraman observed multiple drones coming into sight and disappearing over the course of many minutes watching, but all of them looked like the images on the video. A couple of posts down on the X thread, a visitor posts, embedding this image which seems to have gone missing from the post itself:

The first video clip of a “drone” is literally a commercial airplane. You can even see the outline of its shape. The wing tip lights are red and green as required. The area of northern New Jersey has so many airports, there’s a lot of air traffic there. pic.twitter.com/U762wOGRw5

— Ojisan Kaichou (@OjisanKaichou) December 14, 2024

In fact, here is the approach pattern for Newark Liberty Airport (click on the image for a larger view):

Based on McHugh's narration, he's probably standing almost exactly under, or maybe a little to the east of, the approach flight path of commercial airliners landing at Newark Liberty, and that's simply what he's seeing. They're a couple thousand feet above him, but because it's dark, he thinks they're much closer.

I don't want to claim every drone sighting is a commercial airliner or a helicopter, but if this is the best anyone can come up with so far, then I'm more inclined to think this is another version of the flying saucer fad of the 1950s. Sadly, as a New Jersey boy myself, it doesn't help at all that this got started in the Garden State.

Beyond that, I quoted John Kirby yesterday saying, "upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully." This is, in fact, probably correct. Why won't anyone listen?

In the first place, Kirby already has a poor track record for credibility. He came out in July, just before Joe dropped out of the race, and claimed that Joe was lucid, clear, direct, and in command, when it was plain that he wasn't.

Second, Kirby isn't terribly bright, and in that job, he's a short-timer. I get the feeling he took a poorly-worded explanation from someone at DHS or DOD and didn't do anything to clarify it. Why should he? Sounds like one or more of his bosses is already on holiday break and counting the days to January 20, and Kirby is mad he had to work that day himself. His lazy bumbling led to a confrontation yesterday with Fox's Martha MacCallum:

Martha MacCallum:
A lot of people were unhappy with that comment you made yesterday and felt like you were telling people they were nuts or that they didn’t know what they were seeing with their own eyes.

John Kirby:
No, not at all, Martha. That’s the farthest thing that I would ever do.

Wait a moment. Kirby is a professional press spokesperson, and he's just been accused of insulting his audience, which is what he in fact did, and he's in effect acknowledging it. He was just in government auto-zombie mode, and he's a little surprised that anyone would call him on it. Let's keep in mind that this is a guy who nevertheless comes off as sharper than Karine Jean-Pierre, but when KJP made it clear that Kirby was definitely still number two, he meekly agreed, in front of a national audience. Beta male all the way.

What Kirby needed to do, and what he either didn't want to do or wasn't able to do, was rewrite the insulting part of what he said and insert a paragraph or two of clear explanation, with maybe some audio-visual aid, of what a commercial airliner in landing approach looks like in the dark, with additional explanation of how many airport approach patterns are all over New Jersey, which is that kind of place. This would also be a good opportunity to explain why we shouldn't shoot those things down.

The problem is that Kirby isn't able to function at that level. Just because he seems smarter than KJP doesn't mean he's actually competent. What's almost comical here is that this is metastasizing into one last crisis for the Biden administration, which has never been able to follow the paradigmatic crisis management lessons James Kallstrom taught over the TWA 800 catastrophe: you need a single, credible point of contact who'll answer questions fully with a clear air of integrity.

This could turn into just a punchline of a New Jersey joke, but I'm a little worried there may be too much pressure on the wrong people actually to shoot one of those things down.