(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) When following up on the Chinese spy balloon scandal, President Joe Biden attempted to make excuses for Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, claiming he may not have known the balloon was flying over U.S. territory.
The balloon, which was first spotted in Montana, traveled all the way over the continental U.S. before Biden gave the order to shoot it down off the coast of South Carolina.
Initial reports of the first balloon, from Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command, Glen David Van Herck, indicated that the balloon was over 200 feet tall and weighed “a couple thousand pounds.”
According to the Daily Wire, ABC News host David Muir prodded Biden with several questions about the balloon and what the government has learned about it.
“Let me just ask you this first, do we know definitively yet whether or not that spy balloon was flying over the continental U.S. intentionally?” Muir asked.
“It is almost not relevant once it was over the United States,” Biden replied.
Muir continued, asking if it was possible that Xi was unaware of the balloon.
“There is a possibility of that,” Biden claimed.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, alleged that U.S. balloons constantly fly through the airspace of other countries.
“Since last year, U.S. high-altitude balloons have illegally flown over China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of Chinese authorities,” Wenbin claimed.
Three more unidentified flying objects were shot down over Alaska, Lake Huron and Canada in the week following the destruction of the first balloon.
The National Security Council released a statement countering China’s statements, claiming that their surveillance balloon program constantly violates the airspace of other coutnries.
“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control,” said spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the United States was a weather balloon and to this day has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others.”
