CNN’s Miller: White House Rhetoric on Drones Is ‘Political’ Attempt to Keep Pressure Off Them

On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN NewsNight,” CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller said the White House’s rhetoric on the drones in New Jersey is an attempt to keep the pressure on them “at bay.”

Miller said, [relevant remarks begin around 21:45] “[W]hat [White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby] said is — and I listened to him many times, carefully — he said, we have no evidence that they’re a threat to national security or that they are a threat to public safety, and we can’t corroborate. Now, that means that they have no evidence that they’re not, because when you press them on, well, what is it all? They’re like, we don’t know. So, I think some of this is politicians being politicians, which is to try and calm the ‘War of the Worlds’ … I think some of this is just to tamp this down because I think — and this is a political judgment — you remember when we had the slow-moving Chinese balloon floating ever so slowly across the United States at a very high altitude, it immediately became political and there [were] lots of calls, we need to shoot it down, we need to do this, we needed to do that. So, I think they’re trying to keep the pressure at bay.”

Miller also stated that shooting the drones down would be complicated due to the fact that it’s not illegal to fly them around, and, due to their size there is a danger of them landing on things.

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