Former President Trump slammed President Joe Biden on Monday for his remarks about the February shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon.
Reportedly speaking to the press on Saturday, President Biden said the spy balloon incident was “more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
Trump told Fox News journalist Bret Baier during an interview at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that the remark in issue was “such a stupid statement.”
On February 4, U.S. Air Force fighter jets shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had traveled across the country and flown dangerously close to strategic installations, including Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The former is where the Air Force bases its stealth bombers of the B-2 Spirit kind, while the latter is where intercontinental ballistic missiles call home.
China strongly protested the shooting down of the balloon, arguing that it was a civilian meteorological research platform. The Defence Department of the United States has confirmed that another surveillance balloon flew above Latin American countries on February 3.
Trump has often declared they would not have gotten a surveillance balloon if he had been president. Trump has also promised that spy balloons will not monitor the United States.
Trump mocked Biden’s commands, saying that we shot down the spy balloon as it was heading off for home in China. He noted Biden waited until it had finished photographing our nuclear facilities before shooting it down. However, we shot it down over the water when it completed its job. We were responsible for retrieving it, and then we returned it to China. The balloon is promptly returned to China as soon as we have the balloon.
Trump administration officials have denied that Chinese surveillance balloons flew over the United States while Trump was in office, despite claims to the contrary from the Department of Defence.
