The Pentagon announced Thursday that it had detected and was tracking a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon that had been drifting over the northwestern United States for a few days.

President Joe Biden had intended to have the stratosphere balloon blown out of the sky, and military aircraft, including F-22s, were prepped to move on the foreign object if the president gave the order, reported the Associated Press.

However, U.S. military and defense leaders advised the president not to shoot down the balloon, which was the size of three buses, as the potential harm its falling debris could cause people on the ground outweighed any surveillance threat posed by the balloon, according to CNN.

“This isn’t like Top Gun where it just explodes and doesn’t go anywhere. It’s large, and it’s metal, it would put hundreds of Americans at risk, a defense official told the network.

China claimed the balloon was a weather airship that high winds had “deviated far from its planned course” and said in a statement intended as an apology that it “regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace.”

The Pentagon rejected the Chinese government’s claim of “force majeure,” and the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken postponed his planned trip to Beijing over the incident.

Despite the harm a debris field could bring Americans in the vicinity, the GOP and right-wing trolls have expressed faux outrage over the incident and, since the Pentagon’s announcement, propelled a deluge of conspiracy theories and national security propaganda, hoping to stoke mass outrage at the Biden Administration.

Donald J. Trump Jr., the Twitter troll and first son of the defeated, twice-impeached ex-president Donald Trump, suggested Friday that the government’s response was proof that the Biden family is in bed with China — a groundless claim the far-right has circulated for a long time.

“How many insane decisions… or lack of intelligent decisions (a la watching a spy balloon & not shooting it down) have been made because Joe Biden and his family are compromised by our enemies?” Trump Jr. tweeted.

In the event the U.S. government continued to prioritize the safety of the people on the ground and not shoot down the balloon, Trump Jr. continued on Truth Social, “we [should] just let the good people of Montana do their thing.” The balloon is cruising at 60,000 feet -- well out of range of any legal ordnance or aircraft maintained by individuals on the ground.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who only days ago lied that the U.S. government had sent an Illinois school billions of “COVID cash” to teach critical race theory, made some noise too. Greene demanded that the balloon be shot down and ranted that “China Joe” had “displayed total inaction over this act of aggression.”

“Take the shot,” tweeted Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), a former Interior Secretary of the Trump White House who was accused of lying to federal investigators and resigned amid a cascade of ethics investigations into his conduct.

Fox News got in on the act, too. Jason Chaffetz, a Fox News contributor, claimed to Laura Ingraham that Trump, “much to the left’s chagrin,” created the Space Force for such a development and that the Biden government ought to “capture” the balloon.

Fox News hosts Jesse Watters told his viewers that Biden should shoot down the balloon and “watch it burn like the Hindenburg” because “everyone wants that thing lit up.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who incurred backlash for promising “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” after Biden won the 2020 election, told Fox News's Sean Hannity that the “balloon wouldn't still be flying” if Trump were still in power.

The House GOP Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), took time off his primitive legislation-laden schedule to suggest on Fox News that the balloon may contain “bioweapons… from Wuhan." Comer noted that the federal government "doesn't know what's in that balloon." Which might make them think twice before shooting it down and spreading its debris across the nation.

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