China spy balloon ‘makes us look weak’: Rep. Mike Gallagher
Chair of the House Select Committee on China Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., says the committee is building an investigative team to look into the handling of the spy balloon and strategies to defend American sovereignty.
CHAIRMAN OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CHINA, REP. MIKE GALLAGHER, BLASTS THE BIDEN ADMIN FOR THEIR SLOW REACTION TO THE CHINESE SURVEILLANCE AIRCRAFT
MIKE GALLAGHER: Well, letting a Chinese surveillance balloon lazily drift over America is like seeing a robber on your front porch and inviting him in, showing him where you keep your safe, where you keep your guns, where your children sleep at night, and then politely asking him to leave. It makes no sense. It makes us look weak and flat footed on the world stage. Furthermore, if these Bloomberg reports are true that the Biden administration deliberately tried to keep the American people in the dark so as to salvage Secretary Blinken's trip to Beijing, that's unacceptable. Allowing this to happen in order to preserve a photo op with Xi Jinping, who's committing genocide.
MARIA BARTIROMO: It's absolutely outrageous. They had to be tracking this even as it entered America. Correct?
MIKE GALLAGHER: 100% correct. And if it was being tracked over the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, we absolutely could have taken it down without fear of debris or harm to civilians on the ground. And if we don't have the capability to neutralize it, corral it, collect it, look under the hood and exploit it, well, that's a capability we need to develop with our $850 billion defense budget, because I suspect this is the last time we're going to see a Chinese probe. There's other things we need to do here, Maria. We need to kick PLA affiliated researchers off American universities. We need to make sure that CCP affiliates can't buy land next to sensitive military bases in America. And we need to shut down what are effectively CCP police stations here on American soil. This is unacceptable. We need to defend American sovereignty.
FORMER DNI JOHN RATCLIFFE REFUTES DOD REPORTS CLAIMING THE CHINESE FLEW SURVEILLANCE AIRCRAFTS OVER THE U.S. DURING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
MARIA BARTIROMO: John, the Biden administration is trying to minimize this explosive situation in this past week. And the Department of Defense is claiming that there were three balloons, Chinese spy balloons that entered the United Space airspace during the Trump administration and that they were not shot down and they were not disclosed. Can you please tell us the truth? And if that's true?
JOHN RATCLIFFE: Well, it's not true. I can. I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refuted it yesterday. Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has refuted it. But Maria, the American people can refute it for themselves. Do you remember during the Trump administration, when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the United States that people could look up and see, even with it with the naked eye, and that a media that hated Donald Trump wasn't reporting. I don't remember that either, because it didn't happen, as I said to you earlier. This was unprecedented. We have never had a circumstance where an adversary has had spy craft over our country, our continental United States, posing a threat for the better part of a week straight. And that's why I said to you before, the not only is an unprecedented, but the damage from this is incalculable, both from an intelligence standpoint and the possible payloads. You talked a little bit earlier about the different types of payloads that a stratospheric balloon could carry. Those possibilities are limited only by your imagination. But what we do know is none of those are possible to be deployed against the United States if a stratospheric balloon isn't allowed to traipse across our countryside for four straight days, something that has never happened before. But beyond that, intelligence damage, Maria, the other thing is that the damage that it wasn't just 320 million Americans that were watching this balloon, you know, paralyzed for a week. It was Russia. It was Iran. It was North Korea. It was American adversaries who also were surprised that this type of thing could happen and are frankly thrilled at the possibilities of what they could do to deploy the same type of stratospheric balloon or device over the continental mainland and have this kind of slow, weak, timid, late, frankly, terrible response by the Biden administration. Well, I want to I.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Want to ask you what kind of capability it has. But just to be clear, you're saying there were not three spy balloons from China that entered the United States airspace and traveled and was able to do what we've seen this week?
CHINA DOUBLES DOWN ON ITS SPY BALLOON STORY BY FIRING NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHIEF
JOHN RATCLIFFE: I'm telling you that very clearly. Listen, Maria, it's every time something goes wrong in the Biden administration, there's one of two responses. They either find a way to blame the Trump administration or they try and find a way to say the Trump administration did it, too. And that's what they're trying to say here. This happened during the Trump administration. It didn't. And you would have heard about it before.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY) CALLS OUT CONGRESS FOR SENDING MONEY FOR CHINESE MILITARY RESEARCH
MARIA BARTIROMO: Well, I don't understand why we are so weak toward our number one adversary. Why do you see such a weak response from the Congress and from this president?
CHINA'S SPY BALLOON WAS A TEST THE US 'PLAYED RIGHT INTO,' SAYS FORMER SPECIAL OPS ANALYST
RAND PAUL: You know, it's perplexing. Over 6 million people died and some people say as many as 15 million people died. And we have had one hearing. If you tell Democrats that babies plastic in the baby bottle is causing cancer. They had 25 hearings on this. But 15 million people die worldwide. At least a million Americans died and not one hearing. Some of it is conflict of interest. We have many scientists in our country and around the world who are funded by our government, but they're also funded by the Chinese government directly. Some of this is not fully known because they're not disclosing this. When I asked Dr. Fauci and committee about this, he said it was none of my business and that a law protected these people. We know that 1800 scientists in the north received $193 million. This is not chump change. This is a good deal of money. We need to know which companies are paying them and they should not be on any committees approving. You know, so if they work for Pfizer or Moderna and they get a couple hundred grand a year in royalties, they can't honestly sit on a committee approving these vaccines. So there's a lot that needs to be known. And I'm still trying very hard to get Democrats to come on board. Once we can get one Democrat to sign a document request. The NIH, I think, will start to honor their commitment to the American people and release this information.
MARIA BARTIROMO: So it's all about money, then? It's about the money people receive, just the way Wall Street wants to keep investing in the Chinese companies that are tied to the Chinese military because they're making money on it.
MILITARY EXPERTS PROVIDE FRANK ASSESSMENT OF US SHORTCOMINGS IN POTENTIAL CHINA CONFLICT
RAND PAUL: It is about money. But it's interesting that I think there's an in-between solution where we don't have an embargo and no trade with China. I'm not for that. But at the same time, I'm not for sending them any money. We still send research money over there. And what the House Intelligence Committee released in an unclassified report about a month ago was that our money is going to US universities and then it's going to military research in China, not even civilian research, but actual military research. The Academy of Military Medical Sciences in China gets money from U.S. universities, and Foushee would say nothing to see here because there's an intermediary. And he says, Oh, because we subcontract it, it doesn't count. No, it doesn't count. We should not have taxpayer money funding military research in China. And it's extraordinary that this still goes on.
REP. JASON SMITH (R-MO) TELLS MARIA HOW THE CHINESE SURVEILLANCE AIRCRAFT IMPACTS WASHINGTON’S DEBT CEILING NEGOTIATIONS
MARIA BARTIROMO: Congressman, thanks very much for being here. Mr. Chairman, it is wonderful to have you. How much does China's surveillance balloon change the conversation on spending cuts when it comes to the military? The speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has said that he'd like to see spending levels go back to 20, 22 levels. But wouldn't that mean a $75 billion cut in defense spending?
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JASON SMITH: Absolutely not. There's numerous ways to still actually increase defense spending and decrease the non-defense discretionary. Just think about this. We're talking about fiscal year 22 numbers being what was just over a month ago, our spending just a month ago. And every Republican, almost every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against that $1.7 trillion package. So what's Speaker McCarthy is asking is to just go back to fiscal year 22 numbers. We can cut $100 billion of an obligated COVID money. There is so much waste out there, Maria. We don't have to look at defense. But you know what? We do need to look at everything, though, because there could be some waste in defense. We need to make sure that the funding in defense is actually going towards our military and our soldiers.
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