While the United States relaxed after the Department of Defense downed the suspected Chinese spy balloon Saturday afternoon off the Carolina coast, it was met with ire from China.<\/p>\n

President\u00a0Joe Biden<\/strong> said after the balloon had been shot down: \u201cThey successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.”<\/p>\n

Saturday evening, China\u2019s foreign ministry released a statement expressing “strong dissatisfaction and protest<\/a> against the US’s use of force to attack civilian unmanned aircraft.” China has maintained that the balloon was for \u201ccivilian use\u201d and that it was \u201ccompletely an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChina clearly asked the US to handle it properly in a calm, professional and restrained manner,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cA spokesman for the US Department of Defense also stated that the balloon will not pose a military or personal threat to ground personnel.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The statement also included a threat: \u201cChina will resolutely uphold the relevant company\u2019s legitimate rights and interests, and at the same time reserving the right to take further actions in response.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
A senior US. defense official said on Saturday after the balloon had been downed, \u201cWhile we took all necessary steps to protect against the PRC surveillance balloon’s collection of sensitive information, the surveillance balloon’s overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us\u2026 we were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment<\/a>, which has been valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe balloon never posed a military or physical threat to the American people,\u201d the official continued. \u201cHowever, its intrusion of our airspace for multiple days was an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen.\u00a0Pat Ryder<\/strong> said on Friday that the balloon did not seem to pose \u201cmilitary or physical threat<\/a>\u201d yet that the U.S. would \u201ccontinue to monitor and review options\u201d; Secretary of State\u00a0Antony Blinken<\/strong> had also\u00a0said on Friday that officials were \u201cconfident<\/a>\u201d it is a surveillance balloon.<\/p>\n
The senior defense official also supported Blinken\u2019s stance on Saturday, adding that\u00a0the U.S. \u201cspoke directly with Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their intrusion into our airspace, the PRC put out an explanation that lacked any credibility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The official also said that Chinese surveillance balloons flying over the United States were not new. One flew over the country at the beginning of the Biden administration, while three \u201cPRC surveillance balloons\u201d flew over the country during the\u00a0Donald Trump<\/strong> administration; however, by all appearances, he did nothing.<\/p>\n
Trump defended himself on Truth Social on Sunday, saying the three balloons described by the senior defense official was \u201cJUST FAKE DISINFORMATION!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump further explained, \u201cThe Chinese Balloon situation is a disgrace, just like the Afghanistan horror show, and everything else surrounding the grossly incompetent Biden Administration. They are only good at cheating in elections, and disinformation \u2014 and now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the \u2018heat\u2019 off the slow moving Biden fools. China had too much respect for \u201cTRUMP\u201d for this to have happened, and it NEVER did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the official’s statement, the GOP are still tearing into Biden for his delayed response:<\/p>\n
Arkansas Senator\u00a0Tom Cotton<\/strong> told Fox News on Sunday morning that the administration was\u00a0\u201cparalyzed for an entire week\u201d and called the incident an \u201cembarrassment.\u201d He added,\u00a0\u201cWhat began as a spy balloon has become a trial balloon\u00a0testing President Biden\u2019s strength and resolve,<\/a> and unfortunately, the president failed that test.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the United States relaxed after the Department of Defense downed the suspected Chinese spy balloon Saturday afternoon off the Carolina coast, it was met with ire from China. President\u00a0Joe Biden said after the balloon had been shot down: \u201cThey successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.” Saturday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/inews24.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/17090-strong-dissatisfaction-and-protest-from-china-after-us-downs-suspected-spy-balloon-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1802&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inews24.eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}