Don Lemon Grills Biden Comms Chief Kate Bedingfield Over Chinese Spy Balloon: Was It a Mistake to Not Shoot it Down Earlier?
Don Lemon pressed White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield over President Joe Biden’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon shot down this weekend after traversing the United States for the previous week.
Bedingfield appeared on CNN This Morning on Tuesday, in advance of Biden’s State of the Union speech planned for later Tuesday night. After asking tough questions about Biden’s flagging poll numbers, Lemon turned to China.
“I’m sure the president never anticipated he would be talking about a balloon traipsing across America — the shooting down near Myrtle Beach — he said did not change his state of the union speech, or is going to talk about that?” Lemon asked. “That has a huge impact. Everyone is talking about foreign policy now with this very visual symbol of a balloon going across America.”
“Well, of course, our relationship with China was always going to be in the speech. It is a key consequential relationship, one pillar of our foreign policy.” Bedingfield replied. “The president has obviously worked to continue to manage our relationship with China to a place of competition and not conflict. I would anticipate that he will mention the events of the last week, but, again, the speech and the larger pieces about his foreign policy have not been reworked because of this ball.”
The White House comms chief then turned to defend Biden’s handling of the incident. “Now, what I will say about the balloon is the president handled it effectively and with strength. We were able to capture intelligence on the Chinese as the balloon passed across the country. The decision to wait to shoot it down gave us the opportunity to do that, to gather intelligence on them, and we were able to shoot it down in territorial waters where we could recover the payload and gather that intelligence. There was no threat to the American people…”
Lemon interjected, adding, “He’s been criticized for not shooting it down sooner. You don’t think that was a mistake?”
“No, because we were able to gather more intelligence and more information, Bedingfield replied. “We were able to collect back on the balloon. We know more about Chinese capabilities and tradecraft as a result of that decision, and then we ultimately shot it down and sent a very direct message to China that it was unacceptable.”
Watch above via CNN.
