Appearing on ABC News on Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio tried to score political points by criticizing President Joe Biden’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the US military yesterday, only to be reminded that former President Donald Trump had failed to notify Americans on at least three occasions when Chinese balloons entered the country’s airspace during his administration.
During the interview, ABC host Jonathan Karl asked the Florida Republican if President Biden should have gone against the advice of the U.S. military and instead shot the balloon down over populated land.
Rubio agreed that the debris could have “hurt, harmed or killed people” but proceeded to criticize Biden for not getting on national TV to explain why the military waited to shoot it down until it was safe to do so.
“If that was the case, then I think it really would have been helpful for the president of the United States to get on national television and explain to the American people, this is what we’re dealing with, this is what I’m going to do about it, and this is why I haven’t done it yet. None of that happened. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why they waited so long to tell people about this.”
But Karl pointed out that Trump had failed to disclose similar incidents at least three times.
“This happened three times under the previous president,” the host said. “Obviously, there were no public notifications there.”
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