Balloon bickering over Biden's actions, China's intentions
Jazz, come here, they're shooting at it. Come here. Tonight, the political fallout from the falling Chinese balloon. They understood that it was going to be spotted. They knew the US government would have to reveal it to people. We're going to see it over the sky. On Sunday, Republicans trying to float the idea of a botched response to what the US government believes to be a surveillance balloon launched by China that traveled over much of North America over the last week.
This should never have been allowed to enter the United States and it never should have been allowed to complete its mission. But that mission is still not clear, at least not to the general public. I mean, China could have used potentially any other technology, such as satellite technology to spy on the US. Experts disagree over the true mission. Some say the balloon is less a spy operation than a statement, as China tries to rebuild its place on the world stage post-COVID and its regional influence over US allies like Taiwan and the Philippines. The message they were trying to send is, if they're not going to do anything about a balloon over US airspace, how are they going to come to the aid of Taiwan or stand with the Philippines or Japan or India when the Chinese move on their territory? I told them to shoot it down. On Wednesday.
On Wednesday. Look at the recommendations from them. They said to me, let's wait till it's the safest place to do it. President Biden saying he took the advice of the Pentagon to wait and shoot it down over the Atlantic just off the coast. Yeah, so all of a sudden I seen the missile come out, it hit the balloon. The FAA shut down air traffic at three nearby airports, including Charleston, South Carolina. When they did shoot it down, the debris field was about seven miles.
And so the concern, of course, is how do you do it in a way that absolutely minimizes the danger to American lives on the ground and any kind of aviation operation? The presence of this surveillance balloon in US airspace is a clear violation of US sovereignty. The incident prompting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his trip to China this weekend. For its part, China protested the downing of what it maintains was a weather observation balloon, saying it retains the right to respond further. But what that response could be is still in the air. Sean Lewis, WGN News.
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