Republicans criticized the Biden administration’s handling of a suspected surveillance balloon from China that entered US airspace last week – while deflecting questions about a similar incident that happened several times under former President Donald Trump.
The balloon, which looks like a large white orb to confuse civilians on the ground, moved east across US airspace days before an Air Force F-22 fighter jet was shot down by a short-range missile off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. The interception was televised live, showing the balloon exploding before falling into the Atlantic.
China maintains that the balloons are civilian airships mostly used for weather research, but the US claims they are “spy balloons” that carry sensors and surveillance equipment as they fly over sensitive military areas.
Citing an unidentified senior Pentagon official, the Defense Department said in a statement on Saturday that Chinese balloons “crossed the continental United States at least three times during the previous administration.” The Associated Press reported that officials also talked about other incidents in the Biden administration. None of the four incidents were reported until this week, and it has not been confirmed that the previous balloon was shot down.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
According to the White House, President Joe Biden was first briefed on the balloons last Tuesday, and a day later authorized the military to shoot them down as soon as they were in a location where civilians were not at risk of damage from the debris. . But Republicans have spent the weekend criticizing the administration for not acting quickly enough to retrieve the balloons.
When confronted with multiple incidents of Chinese balloons entering US airspace during the Trump administration, the same Republicans did not give a straight answer.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House intelligence committee, refused to answer Chuck Todd when asked if he had been briefed on some of the incidents during the Trump administration. However, Turner returned to his claim that Biden “does not see the urgency” of the current situation.
when ask about Fox News SundaySen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tried to blame the report of the balloon during the Trump years on former President Barack Obama.
“So I’ve talked to a lot of former Trump administration officials, they say they don’t know of anything like that happening during the administration,” Cotton told Shannon Bream. “Maybe, it’s probably the first time that the Obama administration and the military have been told that it’s not a big deal and they shouldn’t be raising alarm bells. We need to get an answer for that, too, though.
Mike Pompeo, who served as CIA director and secretary of state under Trump, told Fox News on Saturday he didn’t know something like that happened happened “during my four years in office.”
On Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, acknowledged earlier incidents of Chinese balloons entering the U.S., but said there was “no comparison” because of the long flight paths taken by the latest balloons, including over “sensitive military installations .”
Rubio also said that China is trying to signal to the world that the US will not be able to help Indo-Pacific countries threatened by China if it cannot shoot down balloons in its own airspace. when warned by Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” that the Biden administration had in fact shot the balloon, Rubio replied: “Yes.”
Republicans Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio) also claimed that Trump would not allow spy balloons into the country, failing to mention the incident cited by the Pentagon.
Trump himself rejected the idea that surveillance balloons from China entered the US under his watch, posting a denial Sunday on the far-right platform Truth Social.
“[The Biden administration] only good at lying in the election, and disinformation – and now they claim that the Balloon was made by China during the Trump Administration, in order to reduce the ‘heat’ of the slow-moving idiot Biden, “wrote the former president. . “China respects ‘TRUMP ‘ because it happened, and it never happened. ENOUGH FAKE DISINFORMATION!”