Chinese ‘spy’ balloon: Democrat Jim Himes slams GOP calls to shoot down aircraft
Barnini Chakraborty
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Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, blasted his Republican colleagues on Friday for demanding that a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over the United States be shot down.
“To my colleagues who want to blow up the Chinese balloon to a million bazillion smithereens in a Hollywood-like boom: I for one would much rather own it intact than be picking its charred remains off a 100 square mile debris field,” he tweeted.
The Pentagon said Thursday that the high-altitude balloon flying over Montana likely came from China and is being used to collect information from sensitive sites. China’s foreign ministry confirmed Friday that the balloon was theirs but identified it as a “civilian airship” that had gone off course.
The balloon has triggered concerns that Beijing is spying on the U.S. and has prompted Republicans to lay into the Biden administration for failing to remove it from U.S. airspace.
“China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tweeted.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was among the Republicans who said the balloon should be blasted out of the sky.
“Biden should shoot down the Chinese spy balloon immediately,” she said on Thursday. “President Trump would have never tolerated this. President Trump would have never tolerated many things happening to America.”
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The former president went all-caps on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday, writing: “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has also advocated shooting it down and called the intelligence-gathering device a “wake-up” call from China to the U.S.