Biden's Chinese Balloon Theatre

February the first. That balloon then continued to fly over the country to Kansas City area, where it drifted eastward on February the third, and then finally on February the fourth, the balloon was shot down by US fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina, and that was where it ended. More of the story is and less I'm wrong. This looks like it was mission accomplished. The mission was completed by the Chinese, and then we shot it down after

it gotten everything it wanted on the American landscape. Whatever they wanted, they got it well. Ben, that could very well be the case. I will say this was not a good week for the Biden administration. It was not

a good week for the country. I will say, you know, I rarely am in the business of commending Joe Biden, but I do at least have to command that he had the guts to shoot the thing down, which given the last two years, there was very little to think that he would have the guts to give that order. That was the right thing to do, So I'm glad he shot the balloon down. It would have been worse if he hadn't shot it down at all. That being said,

he waited a week to shut it down. January twenty eighth is when this Chinese spy balloon first entered American airspace, and from January twenty eighth to this weekend he did not a damn thing. And unfortunately, on that entire journey, this spy balloon was collecting information. It was hovering over

sensitive US military bases. It was collecting information both photographs presumably infrared and also very potentially attempting to intercept communications, and the data presumably were in turn being beamed upwards to a Chinese spy satellite and set back to Beijing.

So we don't know the extent of what they captured, but they had an entire week to spy on our military basis, while the Biden administration did nothing There's another even more troubling consequence, which is the Biden administration sent a very clear message of weakness to She and the Chinese government. Why is that, Well, ask the simple hypothetical, Ben, what would have happened if nobody had spotted this balloon?

If nobody on Montana, If no private citizen in Montana had looked up and said, hey, what's that giant thing sixty thousand feet up there? If there hadn't been pictures on the internet, if there hadn't been pictures on the news. The answers obvious. If the public hadn't noticed the balloon, Joe Biden would have done nothing, zero, nada. That's what they did for the entire week. That's what they did

before the public spotted. If they didn't tell anyone, they didn't make a public disclosure, They didn't try to shoot it down. It was only after it began driving the news that Biden made the decision to shoot it down. But shoot it down after it had gathered all the intelligence it was sent together. In other words, for this White House, it wasn't a national security question. It was a politics question. It was a pr question. And it's because in this White House it's always politics all the time,

rather than putting America. First question I've got to ask you now is and it's a question I want to know. Can Congress get an answer to this? You mentioned that if it wouldn't have been spotted by average Americans, and then it wouldn't have gone viral on the internet, we probably would have never known about this. Right. That brings

up the question, has this happened before? And they allowed these balloons to just completely own America's airspace, go across our country from one side to the other, and collect any data that they want to that we don't even know about. So it is entirely possible. I will say this first entered American airspace in Alaska on January twenty eighth. Congress was in session last week. I was in DC last week. They didn't brief us. We had no briefings

in Congress. We had no classified briefings. I'm on the set at Foreign Relations Committee. They didn't say a word to us. Now this coming week we're going to be in session as well. They damned sure better have a classified briefing this week. I have every expectation that they will, because I think members from both sides of the aisle want to know what the heck happened, but they did

zero to inform Congress, even in a classified setting. Now, I will say, once this became public, there are a series of talking points that the Biden White House began putting out. Remember they treated this as a communication and political challenge, not as a national security challenge. And one of their talking points is they said, well, this has happened before, and they also said, in particular, it happened under the Trump administration. I will tell you, sitting here today,

I don't know if that's true or not. I have not received any classified briefing or unclassified briefing that confirms that. All I know is what the administration is telling the press, trying to deflect responsibility my view. Now, even as they've spun that story, they've conceded that, well, they were very different contexts in the Trump administration. So I don't know what that means exactly what it means that they're very

different contexts. What we know is that this balloon was over US airspace for a week, that it repeatedly hovered over very sensitive military installations for an extended period of time. If the Chinese had done it previously, we should have

shot the damn thing down previously. But right now they're doing the same sort of thing they do on the classified documents at at Joe Biden's house or compared to Trump's, which is they selectively leak and then make it impossible for you to compare the severity of what you're talking about.

I am perfectly happy to say that any president, Republican or Democrat, if the Chinese send a spy balloon over America and begin committing major acts of espionage that are threatening US military secrets, we need to act to prevent it. And Joe Biden didn't do that. We don't know whether or not the prior administration did. I want to ask you about dereliction of duty because there have been some of your colleagues that are now hauling at that. And before I get to who said that, I want to

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Marco Rubio. He said Biden's failure to address the nation on Chinese balloon is the beginning of a dereliction of duties, saying the fact he's not even addressing us. We got to say, the Union coming up on Tuesday, and it's like, who's running this country right now? If it's not him, Well, unfortunately that follows a pattern where Biden does not address

the nation, he doesn't take on these challenges directly. And the consequence of that it may be that, look, I assume at the State of the Union that Biden is going to try to victory lap this. He's going to try to say, the Chinese sent a balloon and I shot it down, and he's gonna beat his chest on that. But what a responsible commander in chief would do is number one, assess what was the damage to US national security? What valuable intelligence did they gather? And you know, the

Biden administration is using a series of talking points. Their surrogates are pushing out one they're saying as they're saying, well, it was actually good for the United States to have the balloon in the air longer because we blocked its intelligence gathering and instead we gathered intelligence about the Chinese. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence for that assertion that that strikes me as a talking point drafted by a political operative rather than anything that

is in fact accurate. They tried to cover this up because Tony Blincoln was planning to travel to China. He was going to be here, be in China this week, and they wanted the trip to happen. And then once the news broke publicly, they were stuck. And so on Friday they downplayed the threat, said no big deal. Now that the has been shot down, they're acting like Biden

got there with a sniper rifle himself. It took the damn thing out over the Atlantic that they can't make up their message because they're trying to treat it as politics rather than national security. There's another aspect of the politics and national security of this, and that is the response from China. I think some Americans were taken aback by China's response to US shooting down their balloon. They've said it's there as they try to claim it was

some sort of weather balloon that got off course. And now they're saying they basically reserve the right to respond with military ask action. Their words after coming into and spying on our country are stronger than our own commander in chiefs words about what happened here. That is concerning to me as well. Sure that there is some real

risk of Chinese retaliation. Their language is suggesting that they are going to take action in retaliation, and part of the reason why the likelihood of that is not zero is that the Biden white House's response was so weak throughout this. They shot down the balloon after its mission was complete, after it had gathered the intelligence it was sent to gather, presumably after it had already transmitted that

intelligence back to Beijing. Only then did Biden shoot it down, and that lesson the Chinese Communist government took They observed it. And what this White House doesn't understand is that weakness is provocative. The weaker the president is, the more likely

our enemies are to be aggressive and hostile. We saw President Biden's weakness and foreign policy in Afghanistan with the great disgraceful surrender and withdrawal of Afghanistan, surrendering to the Taliban andandening Americans behind, leaving thirteen servicemen and women to be murdered because they botched the withdrawal so badly. That weakness encouraged our enemies. It encouraged China, it encouraged Russia, it encouraged Iran, and encouraged North Korea. Biden's weakness played

a major part in Putin invading Ukraine. Biden's waiving the sanctions on the nord Stream two pipeline, sanctions that I authored into law, that President Trump signed into law that had prevented a Russian invasion. Biden waived those sanctions, and the direct result of waving those sanctions is We've had the most significant land war in Europe since World War Two.

Weakness is provocative, and Biden's weakness this week on the spy balloon significantly increases the chances of the Chinese military doing things like harassing American planes and ships in Asia, doing things like trying to find American assets to do damage to. I think those are real possibilities because the Chinese government will assess that the US commander in chief

will not respond with any meaningful response. You'll look at Joe Biden, and I'm going to ask you from a Senate perspective, solely here has there been a single issue to date where the President has shown true leadership with China, standing up to China. I mean, we know that we've given them oil from our strategic oil reserves. That happened right before the election, that was shocking to many Americans. We know that many believe that he and certainly a

center compromised by the Chinese Communist Party. They have billions of dollars and loans going to the family business and millions and millions of profits. We know what happened with this Chinese oil company CEFE, and we know that they've never really answered those questions. But there are people that believe that they're clearly compromised. Has there been a single issue yet that's been significant where this administration has stood

up to China to date. Well, look, I suppose you could say they shot down a spy balloon after it had finished its espionage ignission. So that's something that's not nothing. But I will tell you more broadly, it's not just Joe Biden in this White House. There are obvious personal issues dealing with allegations of Biden family corruption, the Biden family making millions of dollars from Communist China, from Hunter selling access to his father when he was vice president.

There are those issues, But there's a broader issue about the Democrat Party, which is the Democrat Party is structurally pro China. And there's a reason for that, which is the major stakeholders who support the Democrat Party, big business, big tech, big Hollywood, and big universities. All of them are fully in bed with China. As a consequence, Today's

Democrat Party is fully in bed with China. In the last Congress, I forced to vote on the Senate floor to block the US government from purchasing electric vehicles or batteries that were manufactured with slave labor in concentration camps in China. They're right now, over a million weekers being held in concentration camps in China. I forced that vote.

Every single Democrat except one, Every Democrat except Joe Mansion voted no. They all voted in favor of the federal government buying products from concentration camps made using slave labor. I gotta tell you, Ben, I don't think histories why would they do that? Why? I mean, people hear that the way you just described it. You also mentioned this on facinations. You had an appearance there on Sunday morning.

Why is it that more people are not asking the question, what was their logic on that one to say we're going to keep buying from slave labor camps when we claim that we're in favor of protecting basic human rights around the world. Well, I think it's two things. I think it is number one, the dynamic. I just described that the Democrat Party structurally is unwilling to stand up to China because too much of their support, their financial support,

their intellectual support, their manpower is dependent on China. But secondly, when it comes in particular to electric vehicles and batteries, Today's Democrat Party has handed much of his agenda over to the radical environmentalist left, and so those issues trump human rights. John Kerry, who is supposedly the climates are in the White House, when he was asked about are you troubled about buying products made with slave labor in concentration camps, he said with the haughty aloofness of a

man who married his mill. He said, well, that's not my department. I don't have to worry about that. I have suggested previously that John Carey should be named the concentration camp Customer of the Year. And I want you to pause and think for a second. What is history going to think? What are historians going to think ten years, twenty years, thirty years from now. Imagine concentration camps in the back in the past, imagine concentration camps where if

you have businesses purchasing products made by slave labor. Today's Democrat party is very big on seeking reparations. Does that mean the weagers can sue John Carey and Joe Biden because they are funding the concentration camps. Not one hundred years ago, not fifty years ago, not ten years ago. Today John carry and Joe Biden are funding concentration camps with over one million people enslaved. It's immoral, but yet the press by and large won't cover it. Let's talk

about the spin of this. You mentioned political operatives a moment ago. You did believe that the President on the State of the Union Tuesday night is more than likely going to be like, look, I shot this down, and the Democrats will stand and applause. But they also seem to be kind of pushing out a narrative that we waited so long to shoot down also because we were

just trying to keep you safe. Mayor Pete was on this morning with Jake Tapper on CNN, and he basically says, to the American people, you owe us we kept you safe. Now center, you and I have flown together several times I've taken flying lessons, and when you're in those little assessin one seventy twos, you realize there's a lot of places where there aren't a lot of people in this country.

I mean, it's a very big country, and when you're flying, you see a lot of areas where there's not dense populations. The idea that from Alaska all the way to New York we couldn't shoot this thing down anywhere because we were keeping you safe, I think maybe one of the most absurd lines I've heard so far. Yet they're testing it out on TV this morning. Listen. It states infrastructure, there's moms from Air Force Base and nuclear ballistic missile

fields in Montana. If you look at the map, there Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Fort Bragg, and Camp Lejune in North Carolina. Is the assumption that the balloon was able to gather sensitive information and transmit it back to the Chinese government. Well, the US has stated that steps were taken to prevent

any problems in terms of intelligence collection. Remember, we are talking about a country that has a space program, so I don't know all the ins and outs of what this balloon was doing or what its capabilities were. I do know that when the President gave the order to have this handled, the military gauge the different risks and the different benefits of different approaches, made the decisions that

they did brought this thing down without incident. Right. But the presumption has got to be that the Chinese were able to gather intelligence hovering over the United States for day after days, actually over some of these sensitive sites. I'm sure there's a similar presumption about what spy satellites do that is well outside of my lane. I'm just glad that nobody was heard as this thing came down. When did the Biden administration first learn about this balloon?

This spy balloon entering US airspace, so we're told it first did so. It first entered to US airspace over Alaska two saturdays ago. Is that when the Biden administration learned about it? I really can't speak to that. What I can speak to is the great cooperation we have between the FAA and the Pentagon to make sure that when you have a special military operation like what it took to bring down this balloon, that it happens without

any threat to American lives or property. I mean, you hear that, and it's like we just you can apparently now fly anything you want to over America and they're gonna tell you we kept you safe and there was nowhere that we could have even thought about taking out a balloon. So let me make a couple of observations. One just something I noticed listening to that. Did you pick up on Buddha Jig's case that he is mimicking Barack Obama? There must be a similar presumption about what

spy satellites do. He's doing this sort of speed up and pause, speed up and pause, and it's interesting. Hakim Jeffries, the new Democrat leader in the House, has the exact same cadence he did he did down the night when he was having to hand over the gavel to Gavin Newsman. Finally, in his long long speech he did it said it almost exactly like Barack Obama, and Buddha Jedge didn't used to speak that way. I think he think he's getting

ambitions of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. And there's there's no real mystery about that. But it is a little amazing given the train wreck he's presided over at the Department of Transportation for two years, that his ambitions have stored so high. But let's focus on the substance of what he said and not the the amusing cadence that the affectation that he's put on. UM, I do not know the military's assessment of what the realm of civilian damage

would have been from shooting it down earlier. If and when we have a classified briefing this week, I intend to ask that question. And obviously, if the military briefs that there's a risk of significant civilian damage or lives lost, that's a significant factor. That being said, the point you made Listen, this thing entered US airspace in Alaska. It traveled over Alaska, it traveled over rural Canada, it traveled

over Idaho, it traveled over rural Montana. If if you were to pick locations that have the sparsest population that are the most suitable to shoot down a hot air balloon, it would be hard to come up with locations better suited to that. So I will say I will await the classified briefing to get a military estimation, but I've got a great deal of skepticism that they couldn't have taken this down in the middle of the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere before it had engaged in its espionage.

I think the problem wasn't the feasibility. The problem was the lack of political will to carry it out. And the only reason they got the political will was not because they said, gosh, the risk of espionage is really significant. I think they completely completely minimized the risk of espionage. And it's not even because they said, gosh, if we appear weak to the Chinese, that will be provocative and encourage them to engage in more acts of hostility. I

don't think they care about that. I think they project weakness every day of the week. The reason they finally shot it down once it was over the ocean and its mission was complete was because private citizens had spotted it. It went viral on the internet, it was leading the news, and suddenly everyone was aware of it, and then it became hey, let's shoot the balloon down now that we've

already exposed exposed ourselves to espionage. And it was a communication and media play rather than a military action to keep America safe. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more on that one. I want to ask you about this important meeting. In our last Verdict episode, we talked about Anthony Lincoln and bringing up a hostage. It's been held in China for a decade now ten years in American hostage.

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You and I talked about this and it made a lot of news, thank goodness, about an American it's being held hostage in China. You talked about this important meeting with Anthony B. Lincoln meeting with the Chinese. Do we know the status of that meeting now that this has happened with this balloon and what can the American people do now really to be an advocate for this American

it's being held hostage. Well, unfortunately the meeting has not happened, happening and we don't know when it will happen in the future. Mark Swedan has been wrongfully imprisoned in China for over a decade now. He's a Texan. He's from Luling, Texas. I've spoken to his mother multiple times. His mother, Catherine, is a wonderful woman, who loves her son, who has been praying for her son, who's been speaking out for

her son. This past week, I introduced a resolution in the Senate calling on China to release Mark Swedan, laying out the facts of his case, that he was prosecuted over a decade ago. He was sentenced to death on very flimsy charges, charges for which there are little there's little to no evidence. The State Department has concluded he's unjustly detained. The United Nations has concluded he's unjustly detained.

And I'll tell you the case I made on the floor of the Senate last week, and the case I made on face the Nation yesterday, is that China aspires to be a great nation. China aspires to be a great power. China argues to the world it should be considered a great nation and a great power. Well, great nations and great powers don't hold hostages, they don't behave like tinpot dictators by targeting hostages and political prisoners from other countries. And so I have urged China very senior

levels of government to release Mark Suedan. I had urged Tony Blincoln to press and use the tools we have for China to release Mark Sudan, and I'm going to continue pressing the Biden administration to move that forward. It is unfortunate that b Lincoln will not be able to make that case in person this next week. I don't know when he will next have communications with his Chinese counterparts.

One last question on this. If you go back to DC this week and it's the week of the stay of the Union, obviously that sucks all the oxygen out of the room. But when will you guys find out if you are going to get a classified briefing on what happened this last week? And if they if it doesn't pop up on the schedule, can you guys request

it or can you demand it? How does the protocol work with Congress from that perspective if they just decide to say, we're going to mention to stay the Union, but you guys aren't getting any intel out of us, you know, I think it is likely that we'll have a classified briefing. We can request it, we can press for it. Sometimes the administration will come to Congress and

say we want to present a classified briefing. Sometimes those briefings are presented to particular committees, So you frequently have classified briefings presented to the intelligence committees. Those get the most classified, the most sensitive briefings. You frequently have classified briefings presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee or to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I spent six years on Armed Services. I'm currently on Foreign Relations, and so I'm

often in classified briefings on matters such as this. And then periodically you'll have a classified briefing for all senators, so all hundred senators are invited, and that happens, though I don't know, probably once every two months or so is about the frequency of those briefings. I can tell you I and others have asked for briefings on the classified documents that were found at Joe Biden's multiple residences and also at Maralago and Pence's residence, to get classified

briefings on all those documents. What kind of documents are we talking about and what where do things stand to date? The administration is said, go jump in the lake. They have only briefed the Intelligence Committee and the Intelligence Committee members, both Republicans and Democrats are ticked off. They've said that the briefing they got was woefully inadequate, so I and

others are pressing for a full briefing on this. Typically, the way would work if Congress wants a briefing is that you would get Schumer and McConnell to press the administration and say we need a briefing on this topic. As I said, I think the odds are pretty good that they will schedule one because I think the interest on this Chinese spy balloon is widespread, and I think

it's on both sides of the aisle. People have a lot of questions and are irritated that we learned about it via Twitter and noting the via the administration actually telling us what the hell was going on. Tuesday night is the State of the Union. I will be there at the State of the Union. I've been at a lot of state State of the Union addresses. You know,

I'll tell you. For the State of the Union, each Senator is given the opportunity to invite a guest, and so the guest I've invited to Tuesday State of the Union is Lieutenant Levi Baird, who's a Navy surface warfare officer. He's a Texas resident, he's a top rated officer, and he's currently a signed as an instructor at the Navy's

Surface Warfare School. And in March of twenty two, he faced a separation board because he declined to get the COVID vaccine, and before they could kick him out, a federal judge entered an injunction preventing them from kicking him out.

But now the Navy is trying to recoup from him seventy five thousand dollars that they already paid him because he wasn't named a department head and he didn't make department head because he made the personal decision not to receive the COVID vaccine due to his sincere religious objection.

And so I'm really proud to be welcoming Lieutenant Baird to the State of the Union, and I hope that his being there will cause those in the media to tell his story because it really underscores how grotesquely unfair Joe Biden's policies are that are punishing these American hero these sailors and soldiers and airmen and marines and coast guardsmen who spent their lives defending this nation, and yet this administration is doing everything they can to punish them

for making their own personal medical choice, consistent with their own conscience, consistent with their own faith. Yeah, it's a perfect person invite to say of the Union and bring light to that. We will be back with you, by the way, doing a special show the night of the Stay of the Union super late. You guys will get that on Wednesday morning as well, So make sure you hit that subscribe or auto download button. It makes you

tell your family and friends about this podcast. Please pray for that American hostage and reach out to your congressman center. We don't need this to lose any momentum right now. We need to keep focusing on that. We'll see you back here at Wednesday morning. Make sure you join a send center, have fun to stay the Union as always, and over under this a shorter long speech under thirty minutes or over thirty minutes your thoughts. That's an easy one.

I feel like I'm gonna predict an hour and twenty one minutes. Oh, I like it all right, hour and twenty one. I'm gonna go fifty two minutes all right, Well, you know you didn't quite prices right me. You didn't say an hour and twenty minutes. So we'll see how it shakes out. Done, I love it all right, We'll see how you guys back here Wednesday morning,