President Biden kicked off his first day of campaigning for re-election by making excuses for communist China — saying that President Xi Jinping never meant to fly a spy balloon over sensitive American military sites earlier this year.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters Saturday as he headed to Philadelphia for his first campaign rally of the 2024 election. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
The conciliatory comments came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued a two-day visit to Beijing, his first diplomatic trip there since he called off a planned trip as the balloon made its uncontested three-day journey across US airspace.
“I’m hoping that over the next several months I’ll be meeting with Xi again, and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how … to get along,” Biden added.
Republicans were outraged at Biden’s anemic take on the incursion.
“I’m not sure how the President could say that with a straight face,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told The Post. “Not only was it intentional, it was a direct threat to our national security. China is our greatest geopolitical foe.”
“Biden has been anything but tough on China,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY). “It seems he’s compromised, which is what the evidence reviewed by the House Oversight Committee suggests.”
Meanwhile in Nevada, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis pledged to send Biden “back to his basement … where he belongs” as he slammed the Democrat’s leftist policies on energy, spending, and the border.
“America’s got to make a decision, because we need to restore sanity in this country,” the Florida governor told a crowd at the annual Basque Fry fundraiser, which famously features fried lamb’s testicles on its menu. “We’re going to reverse the decline.”
Biden’s China comments came shortly before he took off in Marine 1 for a 40-minute aerial tour of cleanup efforts at the I-95 overpass that collapsed in Philadelphia this week.
“There’s no more important project to the country right now as far as I’m concerned,” Biden said as he and local elected officials spoke about the disaster, which has sparked traffic nightmares on the critical interstate artery since a gas tanker truck flipped and burst into flames Sunday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who followed Biden at the podium, promised to have the roadway open again “within the next two weeks.”
But in a garbled minute-long comment, Sen. John Fetterman — dressed in his customary hoodie and gym shorts — praised Biden for his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill as “the jewel, kind of a law, of the infra, infration, infriction bill that is gonna make sure that there’s bridges like this all across America getting rebuilt.”
US-China relations have grown increasingly tense during Biden’s presidency.
Last week, his administration admitted that China has built a spy base in Cuba — after first denying the story — and Blinken was reportedly scolded by Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday during a pre-trip phone call.
Beijing has been illegally militarizing reefs in the South China Sea, is intensifying surveillance of Americans, and has repeatedly threatened to invade democratic Taiwan to forcefully “reunify” it with mainland China — with little response from Biden.
“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States,” Biden said Saturday, without specifying them.
Biden and Xi have not spoken since February, when two US Air Force fighter jets shot the spy balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean, sparking fury from China.
The president made no mention of foreign policy when he delivered a heated speech to about 2,000 union members at a campaign rally at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
“I’m proud to be the most pro-union president in American history,” he proclaimed.
“But what I’m really proud about is being re-elected the most pro-union president in history,” he added, seemingly fast-forwarding ahead 17 months to November 2024.
Biden also crowed that inflation has “come down 11 months in a row” – without acknowledging that the steep rise in consumer prices, which peaked at a 40-year high of 9.1% last June, has been driven by his own free-spending fiscal policies.
