Ted Cruz Says ‘Good’ Chinese Spy Balloon Shot Down, But ‘Xi Knows Damn Well’ Biden Wouldn’t Have Had ‘Guts’ if Montanans Hadn’t Spotted It

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The Chinese spy balloon that civilians first spotted over Montana wouldn’t have been shot down under President Joe Biden if not for those photographs and videos, said Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on Saturday.

The U.S. government tracked the balloon on its way to the United States and as it crossed over the country, including passing over military bases. It was shot down on Saturday once it was over open water off the coast of North Carolina.

Fox News was carrying live video of the balloon and caught the exact moment of the explosion on air, and many other videos of it being shot down soon spread on social media.

It was images and video on social media in the first place that brought the balloon into the national media spotlight this week. Cruz credited that for the balloon being destroyed at all, in a tweet sent not long after Biden took credit for the act.

Cruz said shooting it down was “good” and “absolutely the right thing to do,” but that it should have been done “BEFORE the Chinese spy balloon went across the entire country.”

He added that China’s President Xi Jinping “knows damn well that Biden wouldn’t have had the guts” to shoot it down if not for it having been spotted and photographed by civilians in Montana.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a statement on Saturday that the balloon “was being used by the PRC in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.”

Reports indicated it was an F-22 Raptor that shot down the spy balloon as it was off the Carolina coastline. The Pentagon confirmed this week that another Chinese spy balloon was identified over Latin America.