While he made time to attack Republicans during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden failed to note his handling of the Chinese spy balloon affair. A new poll might just explain why the Democrat avoided the topic.
More than 63 percent of voters say they disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the spy balloon episode, according to the poll conducted by The Trafalgar Group for Convention of States Action.
The survey of nearly 1,100 likely general election voters, conducted Feb. 6-7, finds 34.5 percent of respondents say the crisis should have been dealt with sooner, and 29 percent say the crisis was mishandled overall. Just a little more than a third of those surveyed (36.6 percent) said the president handled the matter appropriately.
“The haughty assurance from the DC Establishment that ‘the adults are back in charge’ after Biden became president is once again coming back to haunt us,” said Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States Action. “As we saw with the historic disaster in Afghanistan, President Biden and his team are consistently unprepared for the crises our country is facing, both internationally and domestically.”
As The Washington Examiner reported, Republicans blasted the president for omitting any explicit mention of the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the United States last week in his State of the Union address. The balloon was eventually shot down over the Atlantic Ocean after freely drifting for days over U.S. airspace.
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) told the Washington Examiner a national security threat that occurred days before the State of the Union warranted a mention.
“I mean, yeah, it was ridiculous, right? I mean, when you think of the fact that an invasion just happened in our airspace and a spy balloon went over 21 military installations? I’m sorry, I think we should have talked about that,” he said.
Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO-04) said the administration let the balloon traverse the nation “with impunity,” and something has to be done to prevent it from ever happening again.
“We’ve got to wake up in America that China is the most critical national threat to our security, economically in the way they’re stealing our intellectual property, and the military threat that they pose to our nation each and every day,” Alford told the Examiner.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14) heckled the president during his speech, shouting, “China is spying on us!”
The Convention of States poll also found a majority of voters (59.2%) believe Biden’s handling of the spy balloon made America look weak on the world stage. Only 10 percent of respondents said the incident made the United States look strong to the rest of the world.
Rep Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08), chairman of the House’s new committee on China, said the United States faces two existential threats: “a debt crisis and a hostile foreign adversary in the Chinese Communist Party that threatens our very way of life.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photos “Spy Balloon Recovery” by the U.S. Navy.
