Balloon blast sparks hot air war of words
The White House has hit back at Republican criticism of President Joe Biden over the week-long wait to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the US for days, crossing over military and nuclear missile sites.
As China threatened retaliation after the surveillance balloon was shot down by a fighter jet off the South Carolina coast, Republicans said Mr Biden had been weak and too slow to act, endangering national security.
But Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg dismissed the criticism, pointing out that Republican calls for the balloon to be shot down as soon as it was spotted ignored the potential danger to people on the ground.
“When they did shoot it down, the debris field was about seven miles. So the concern, of course, was how do you do it in a way that absolutely minimises the danger to American lives on the ground,” Mr Buttigieg said.
An F-22 fighter fired a Sidewinder missile into the inflatable six nautical miles off the coast near Myrtle Beach. An operation was launched to retrieve the debris from the Atlantic Ocean.
A second balloon was spotted flying over Colombia, which said it had been monitoring the object since Friday until it abandoned (national) airspace”.
Republican senator Tom Cotton claimed “the Chinese tested Joe Biden and he failed”. He said: “The President was paralysed for an entire week by a balloon. I think part of it is the President’s reluctance to take any action that would be viewed as provocative or confrontational towards the Chinese.”
Republican claims that the aircraft would never have been allowed to enter US airspace under the presidency of Donald Trump were immediately debunked when the Pentagon revealed three Chinese spy balloons had entered the US under his administration.
Mr Trump claimed China “respected us greatly” when he was in power. “It never happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately.”
But a defence spokesman refuted Mr Trump’s claim by saying Chinese surveillance balloons passed over the US “at least three times during the Trump administration”.
They were not shot down, nor revealed to the public.
Shortly after Mr Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down safely, far-right Republican Matt Gaetz took to Twitter, writing “Now blow up TikTok”, referring to the controversial Chinese-owned app.