No, they actually said that.

The same network that suggested a lost Malaysian airplane fell into a black hole — and won an award for their reporting — also wants you to know that, due to the government shutdown, Earth is at risk for a strike from an undetected asteroid.

In fact, according to CNN’s Tom Foreman, one is heading right for us as we speak and should be here quite soon.

According to Foreman, the shutdown will result in a plethora of government-funded programs temporarily closing up shop.

“Meanwhile many services would be stopped or delayed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would back down its flu tracking program even as the nation faces the worst outbreak in years,” said Foreman. “Some senior nutrition programs would be paused. 200,000 passport applications went unprocessed in 1995.”

That’s when Foreman got down to the meat of the problem. In 2013, when the government shutdown last, NASA was forced to stop keeping tabs on asteroids that could threaten the Earth.

“Congress funds much of the scientific research done in this country. In 2013, that meant some experiments went on hold in 2013 and suffered costly losses of data. In space same year, for more than two weeks, NASA reportedly stopped monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids,” said Foreman, adding “a big one, by the way, is expected to brush by Earth on February 4th.”

This…is CNN.

Perhaps it’s SMOD holding his own special election, seeing as how he failed to come through for us during the 2016 circus we had to live through. If that’s the case, then I know who I’m voting for.

Why this is brought up by CNN, I’m not sure. It’s not like there aren’t other first world countries out there with telescopes. Furthermore, if an asteroid was about to strike the planet, I doubt the United States would do little to nothing about it because eight percent of the government is shut down.

Rest assured, folks. An asteroid is not going to sneak up on us and kill us because a sliver of the U.S government shut down. There’s no giant rock hiding behind a space bush that will suddenly destroy us while one country isn’t looking.

But when breathless panic means more views, an asteroid strike is fair game I suppose.