President Joe Biden allowing a Chinese spy balloon to fly over rural America without being shot down is "ridiculous" and effectively granting permission for a hostile foreign power to "breach our national security," retired Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt warned on Newsmax.
"So where's NORAD? Where's our sovereignty? Where's all these other things: Americans are not paying a trillion dollars a year for this breach of our national security," Holt told Friday's "Wake Up America."
Holt said Biden is willfully permitting China to spy on America — a first in our history — just days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed to Beijing for talks with China.
"So what you're looking at is a reconnaissance balloon: It is a spy balloon meant to be able to travel massive distances and loiter, so that it can take different types of imagery and gather and collect anything that it can," Holt told co-host Rob Finnerty. "It can also do signals intelligence gathering, so monitoring radio waves, monitoring channels and stations.
But none of that's really as nearly as important as the fact that we allowed this thing into United States and Canadian airspace."
Biden says shooting down Chinese spy gear would endanger Americans over rural Montana, but Holt called that a "ridiculous" excuse.
"I could give you a very nice glide path for that balloon by just putting about five 20 millimeter rounds into it and let it descend, so there's not really going to be a real danger there," he said.
And Chinese media is "humiliating" U.S. air defense, calling it a mere "decoration," Holt continued.
"Here we are this morning with the Chinese press goading us, saying that American air defense is merely a decoration, and that's what the Global Times, a Chinese front operation, is reporting this morning."
Blinken should call off his visit to China, Holt concluded.
"It should be a non-visit; it should be a 'we're not coming; we're not going to talk to you,'" Holt said. "This is not what nations who are trying to engage diplomatically do. So, we'll take care of your balloons first, and then we'll start to reevaluate what the Chinese relationship is.
"We keep living in this dream of the Chinese relationship we would love to see — not the one that we have. Because the Chinese are extremely clear about what their attitudes and intentions are with us."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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