Trump attacks Pentagon, Biden over Chinese spy balloon

Donald Trump says China had ‘too much respect’ for him to deploy the surveillance devices during his administration.

Former US president Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a 2024 election campaign event in Columbia, South Carolina.

Donald Trump has slammed the Pentagon after it claimed “at least three” Chinese surveillance balloons crossed the mainland US during his administration, as Republican criticism of President Joe Biden’s supposed tardiness in shooting down the balloon intensified.

The former president, who last week called on Mr Biden to destroy the balloon when it was first discovered hovering above Montana, erupted on social media on Sunday (Monday AEDT) after the Pentagon told reporters three Chinese spy balloons had crossed the US during the Trump administration, despite Mr Trump insisting “it never happened with us”.

“Now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the “heat” off the slow-moving Biden fools … China had too much respect for “TRUMP” for this to have happened (sic), and it NEVER did,” he said on Truth Social, likening “Chinese balloon situation” to “the Afghanistan horror show”.

A senior Pentagon official said “PRC government surveillance balloons” had “ transited the continental US at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time”.

US President Joe Biden on Saturday congratulated fighter pilots for taking down a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast after it spent several days flying over the US.

As the US coast guard continued its salvage operations on Sunday (Monday AEDT), Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators who receive classified intelligence briefings, said Mr Biden waited too long and cast doubt on the intelligence value of salvaging the Chinese device.

“They flew this thing across the middle of the United States so I imagine whoever designed this thing and put it up there realised … at some point the Americans may get their hands on this,” he told CNN on Sunday (Monday AEDT).

“It’s quite possible that it was designed in such a way where there wouldn’t be much value to us in that regard.”

The Pentagon briefing also revealed the balloon was first discovered on January 28 above Alaska before crossing into Canadian territory, and then re-entering the US on January 31, before the President gave the order on February 1 to destroy it.

“It was out of an abundance of caution to US citizens on the ground that we chose not to take it out over land, but to take it out over water”, the senior official said, adding the delay also afforded opportunities to “learn technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities”.

The moment a US fighter jet shoots down suspected Chinese spy balloon. Picture: Angela Mosley

Separately, Democrat majority leader Chuck Schumer said the Gang of Eight would be briefed on the fallout from the balloon incident as soon as Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT).

In a series of official statements the Chinese government had earlier condemned the US military operation as an “over-reaction” and vaguely warned of potential “retaliation”, maintaining the device was a weather monitoring device that had blown off course.

The senior Pentagon official said the balloon was shot down by an F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft with a single air-to-air AIM-9X missile.

“We also had support with F-15s (from) Massachusetts; we had tanker support from … Oregon, Montana, Massachusetts, South Carolina, North Carolina,” he added, noting the help of Canadian forces, who “were with us the entire way as we executed this operation”.

Foreign Minster Penny Wong said the US had “managed this as carefully as possible they brought the balloon down over their own territorial waters”.