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Pentagon shoots down Chinese balloon, GOP claims on the same day

Republicans saw the Chinese surveillance balloon as a political winner, right up until Donald Trump's record got in the way.

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Our long national nightmare, which was neither long nor a nightmare, came to a deflating end on Saturday afternoon. NBC News reported:

The U.S. downed the Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday, a U.S. official said, setting off a tense exchange between the two nations. An F-22 raptor with a single missile shot down the balloon at 2:39 p.m., according to a senior defense official. It was between 60,000 to 65,000 feet in the air when it was downed.

In a healthy and mature political environment, this would likely be seen as a story related to diplomacy, espionage and tense relations between the world’s two most powerful countries. After all, by all appearances, China made a serious mistake for which officials in Beijing appeared wholly unprepared. What’s more, the timing of the incident did China no favors: It was poised to welcome Secretary of State Antony Blinken and focus on its post-Covid vision.

Instead, Beijing is scrambling to explain its own misstep, while pretending to be outraged that the United States shot down its balloon.

But in our current political environment, we had a very different kind of conversation.

Step One was head-shaking hysterics from Republicans who should’ve known better. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, for example, appeared on Fox News last week and asked the kind of questions that reinforced concerns about how unserious he is about his responsibilities. “Is that bioweapons in that balloon?” the Kentucky Republican asked. “Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?”

Step Two was the inevitable GOP smear campaign, as Republican tried to convince the public the Chinese surveillance balloon was President Joe Biden’s fault. “China believes America is a weakened superpower with a reputation of strength that no longer holds true,” Sen. Marco Rubio wrote via social media, targeting his own country’s government. The Florida Republican, a few hours before the U.S. military shot down the balloon, also whined about Biden failing to shoot down the balloon.

Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee, went so far as to argue that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “should resign.” He did not appear to be kidding. Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, further condemned the administration’s “embarrassing display of weakness.”

Step Three was predictable: Republicans insisted that such an incident wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump were still in the White House.

Step Four was coming to the realization that similar incidents did, in fact, happen while Trump was in the White House. In fact, according to the Pentagon, Chinese balloons “transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration.”

Though the details surrounding those incidents are sparse, a Washington Post report added that the Defense Department notified Congress over the weekend of “several previous incursions of U.S. airspace by Chinese surveillance balloons, with earlier sightings near Texas, Florida, Hawaii and Guam. ... The defense officials said that several of those events occurred during the Trump administration, [Republican Rep. Michael] Waltz said.”

All of which led to Step Five, which largely consisted of Republicans pretending not to notice Step Four. In fact, Rep. Mike Turner appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” and when Chuck Todd reminded the Ohio Republican about balloon-related incidents from the Trump era, the House Intelligence Committee chairman brushed off the relevant detail and quickly went back to targeting the Democratic White House.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas suggested the Trump-era incidents were somehow Barack Obama’s fault.

For his part, Trump himself, after being told about Chinese efforts during his administration, boasted that China “would have never” engaged in such efforts during his administration, despite the apparent evidence to the contrary, adding, “China had too much respect for ‘TRUMP’ for this to have happened, and it NEVER did.” (He also posted a weird missive about China possibly having personnel on the unmanned balloon.)

Or put another way, the former president, whose track record for brazen dishonesty has few rivals, apparently wants Americans to believe that the Pentagon is lying.

Based on what we currently know, the facts surrounding this incident appear relatively straightforward: China made a mistake with a surveillance balloon; Biden was advised to wait to shoot it down until it wouldn’t pose any risks to the public; and then a U.S. missile resolved the matter. The Chinese equipment will be retrieved and analyzed.

I don’t doubt that GOP officials will continue to make a fuss, perhaps as some kind of clumsy effort to put Biden on the defensive ahead of tomorrow’s State of the Union address, but reality does not appear to be on Republicans’ side on this.

President Joe Biden will deliver his second State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET. Follow msnbc.com/sotu for live updates and analysis from experts and insiders.