President Joe Biden can’t tell it straight to save his life, not even when it comes to violations of US sovereignty. 

He read out a brief, surprise statement Thursday on the trio of mystery objects shot down by US forces after last week’s spy-balloon fiasco. “Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program,” the prez insisted, “or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.” 

OK, then why did he order them shot down? “We could not rule out the surveillance risk to sensitive facilities,” he said.

So is “shoot first” the rule going forward? Was it supposed to be the rule before now? How — and why — did we go overnight from “wait and see” to DefCon 5? Reporters surely would’ve asked those questions — but Biden didn’t take any.

After several days when the president said nothing on the issue this was thin gruel indeed. Adding to the insult, he repeated his laughable claim that he gave the order to shoot down the Chinese balloon “as soon as it would be safe to do so.” (Which turned out to mean after letting it have a weeklong gander at our nuke sites while wandering over low-population swathes of the country.)

So the whole affair remains completely opaque. Which gives major credence to the theory that 1) the White House kept the first balloon quiet (until private citizens spotted it and got the word out) in an effort to avoid having to cancel Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing, and 2) that everything subsequent — including our new, aggressive anti-balloon posture — is pure butt-covering. 

Unless and until Biden does more than pretendto explain it all, no one has any reason to believe anything else.