Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union to speak with host Jake Tapper, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), savaged President Joe Biden for his weak, delayed response to the Chinese balloon that drifted over much of America Friday and Saturday before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean by an F-22 Raptor.
Rubio’s comments about Biden came after Tapper asked him if he agreed with Senator Tim Scott’s assessment of the situation, asking:
“Your colleague and friend Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina accused President Biden of, quote, ‘dereliction of duty by allowing the Chinese spy balloon to fly across the U.S.’ That’s a pretty strong accusation. Do you agree with it?”
Senator Scott (R-SC), for reference, said, in a tweet “The balloon should have been shot down before it crossed the continental United States, not after. We still don’t know what information was collected and where it was sent. This was a dereliction of Biden’s duty, and let’s hope the American people don’t pay a price.”
Senator Rubio, in his response to Tapper, largely agreed with what Senator Tim Scott said, walking through the steps the Biden Administration would have had to take to end up where it did, particularly with trying to keep the public in the dark about the balloon. In his words:
“Well, I think the dereliction of duty begins with this. Why not Tuesday or Wednesday — you know people are going to see it. At some point, you know you are going to have to disclose this, but they didn’t want to. They didn’t want to have their hand forced on canceling the Blinken’s visit, so they didn’t want to have to talk about it. Why didn’t the president go on television and basically explain what we’re dealing with here and why he’s made the decisions he’s making, and what they intend to do?
“Once they went public with it, knowing the amount of interest this was going to generate, presidents have the ability to go before a camera, go before the nation and basically explain these things early on. His failure to do so, I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t do that. That is the beginning of dereliction of duty.”
Continuing, Senator Rubio went on to explain how Biden’s tardiness in acting was also a dereliction of duty, saying:
“The second is, you have to act swiftly on these things. I think that’s part of one of the things the Chinese are trying to message, and that is the U.S. had to see this coming and decided they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about it early on and had to wait until this thing went across the middle of the country.
“What are we going to do the next time? Allow it to fly through again and shoot it down once it gets to the East Coast? These are questions the White House needs to answer. I don’t think these are partisan claims I’m making. I think there would be broad agreement that we need to know moving forward what our policy will be.”
Watch Rubio discuss that with Tapper here:
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1