Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) blasted the Biden administration’s response to the alleged Chinese spy balloon that crossed the United States last week, calling it “indecisive” and “weak.”
Daines, who represents the state where the balloon was first spotted, said there was no excuse not to shoot it down immediately since, in Montana, the “biggest risk would have been hitting a cow, a prairie dog, or an antelope.” The Biden administration waited for the balloon to cross the continent before it took down the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, citing concerns that debris could harm people on the ground.
CHINA ‘STRONGLY DISAPPROVES OF’ US SHOOTING DOWN SPY BALLOON, DANGLES RETALIATION
“The bigger issue here was the response to that balloon,” Daines told Fox & Friends on Monday. “This was really more of a trial balloon by the Chinese. They took a look at, how decisive is this president? The president was indecisive. He projected weakness at this moment, and it is exactly what the Chinese wanted to see happen.”
Daines chalked up the response as yet another failure of President Joe Biden.
“It’s one more failure of several from this administration,” he said. “Go back to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. The president is pleading with Iran and Venezuela to supply oil to the United States. And here’s one more example of a failure of projecting weakness of the United States of America.”
Daines also talked about his guest for the State of the Union on Tuesday night, a father who lost his son to a fentanyl overdose.
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“We lost eight Butte residents last year to fentanyl. This is a crisis,” he said. “We have a record level of fentanyl deaths now in this country. It’s a direct result of the Mexican cartels who are producing it and flooding across the southern border, and our Border Patrol agents want to stop that fentanyl, but they can’t because they’re overwhelmed by the illegals coming across the border, and Biden can stop this. He can stop this if he changes his policy and builds the wall.”
The U.S. shot down the balloon on Saturday off the South Carolina coast after it was detected in American airspace on Jan. 28. China countered the claim that it was used for espionage, instead insisting the balloon was used only for meteorological purposes and merely drifted off course.
