Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized President Joe Biden on Wednesday over the president’s remarks about China during his State of the Union address.
Cruz’s remarks came after the U.S. military used an F-22 Raptor to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday using a single air-to-air A9X Sidewinder missile that was fired at an altitude of approximately 58,000 feet. The decision to shoot down the spy balloon came after Biden allowed it to fly thousands of miles over the continental U.S. last week.
“When [Joe Biden] talked late in his speech and it took nearly an hour for him to get to it,” Cruz said. “But when he finally got to China, and he said, ‘We’re standing up [to] China and America stronger than ever before, and our enemies are weaker.’ It was utterly absurd.”
“I mean, we just finished last week, the world watching as a Chinese spy balloon for over a week hovered over U.S. Army bases, secure installations, committing espionage and Biden weakly and impotently rank wrung his hands, he did nothing,” Cruz continued. “And then finally, after it completed its mission, he shot it down once the mission was over once our security had been compromised. And the result of that is Xi and every other enemy in the world took the measure of the commander-in-chief, and they concluded he was weak. He was not willing to defend U.S. airspace.”
“I think that was actually one of the major objectives of the incursion,” Cruz added. “I think the Chinese knew the balloon would be spotted, it was visible to the naked eye, they knew it would be spotted. And yet, they also knew Biden would be so weak, he wouldn’t do anything about it, or they suspected it. And he confirmed that.”
WATCH:
It took 58 minutes and three seconds for Joe Biden to talk about China, the country the poses the single biggest threat to the U.S. and just spent a week spying without consequences on our most sensitive military installations.
Instead, Biden says this is a "competition" #SOTU pic.twitter.com/arZY7ZCxvU
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 8, 2023