Cruz: Biden ‘Allowed a Full Week for the Chinese to Conduct Spying Operations over the United States’

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Joe Biden allowed China to spy on the United States for a week by not shooting down the Chinese balloon.

Partial transcript as follows:

MARGARET BRENNAN: So this balloon traversed 11 states, but the Pentagon says they were able to mitigate some of its impact. Do you think there is upside to the fact that this was captured this time?

CRUZ: Well, listen, I want to start by doing something that I don’t do very often, which is commending Joe Biden for actually having the guts to shoot this down. That was the right thing to do. That is absolutely what the President should have done. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that until a week after it entered U.S.airspace.

He allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States, over sensitive military installations, exposing not just photographs but the potential of intercepted communications. And- and more broadly, I think this entire episode, telegraphed weakness to Xi and the Chinese government. And to illustrate why I would just ask one- one hypothetical question: imagine how this would have played out if nobody had taken any pictures of the balloon, if nobody in Montana had looked up and noticed this giant balloon, if it wasn’t in the news.

We know that when the Biden administration knew about the balloon, they said nothing, they did nothing, they didn’t shoot it down. And at the end of the day, I think the only reason they shot it down is because it made it into the news and they felt forced to as a matter of politics rather than national security. That’s a bad message for the Chinese government to hear.