President Biden is giving a seemingly incomprehensible answer to Americans’ concerns about the drones that have been flying in air space above New Jersey and other East Coast states over the course of the last month. Mr. Biden says that there was just one drone that took off in mid-November, and it inspired hundreds of hobbyists to launch their own aircraft for an unknown reason. 

The president has faced fierce pushback from lawmakers of both parties as his administration fails to give coherent answers about what exactly these drones are. The White House originally said that the drones aren’t even there, and that New Jerseyans were seeing nothing more than airplanes. The intelligence community said the same thing to members of Congress on Tuesday. 

Mr. Biden on Tuesday night said the drones were civilian drones launched by people who just wanted to get attention from the national press. 

“Nothing nefarious apparently. But they’re checking it all out,” the president said on the South Lawn as he was preparing to board his helicopter. “I think it’s just one — there’s a lot of drones authorized that’s up there.” 

Mr. Biden decided to speculate that there was only a single drone that went up in mid-November, inspiring the hundreds of others that have been reported from nearly every state between Massachusetts and Virginia. 

“I think one started and they all got, everybody wanted to get in their deal,” Mr. Biden said of the alleged attention-seekers. “So far, no sense of danger.”

New Jersey Republicans and Democrats have raised alarms for the last several weeks about the possibility of the drones. Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, who is running for governor in 2025 and formerly served as a Navy helicopter pilot overseas, recently called on the president to deploy Reaper drones over New Jersey to help detect the drones. State and local law enforcement have said that they do not have the necessary technology to follow the unmanned aircraft. 

On Tuesday, just as Mr. Biden made his assertion that the drones were no threat and that they seemingly belonged to these attention-seekers, members of Congress were receiving a classified briefing from the intelligence community. According to the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Congressman Jim Himes, members were told that the drones have nothing to do with the federal government. 

“They are not” Mr. Himes told reporters after the briefing when asked if the drones were federal property. Mr. Himes, who lives in Connecticut, said that he knows firsthand how crowded the airspace above New Jersey and New York is, so it could also be the fact that many people are just seeing normal planes.