Former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland told Newsmax on Friday that China "timed this perfectly" when asked about a suspected Chinese spy balloon in U.S. airspace.
McFarland said on "Wake Up America" that the U.S. hasn't shot down the reconnaissance balloon because the Biden administration and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "are so desperate for" Blinken's upcoming meeting with Chinese officials.
"They don't want to do anything to screw it up so they're afraid of doing it, even though what the Chinese have done is so deliberately, they've timed this perfectly," McFarland said. "They have sent … a spy balloon over, they know we're not going to shoot it down, and then we're going to come up with a whole lot of excuses of why it's not a big deal."
She added: "What the Chinese are doing with this is sending a deliberate signal to the rest of the world, particularly in Asia, that they can humiliate the United States and the United States will do nothing about it."
McFarland said "the Chinese are very good at this, it's called 'saving-face, losing-face' … in 2016 for example, when … President [Barack] Obama [was] going to Beijing for the G-20 conference, all the other heads of state came into the Beijing airport, they got the mobile staircase that pulled up to their national aircraft. The presidents of the country came down the gangplank and they all got shake hands with the Chinese leaders.
"What happened when President Obama landed at that airport? Whoa, we couldn't find a mobile staircase to go up to Air Force One, President Obama was forced to deplane from the belly of that aircraft. And humiliation.
"Now the Chinese were sending a signal. The Obama administration said, Oh, no big deal, he got on the ground,' but the Chinese knew, they sent that picture all around the world, all around Asia. They're doing the same thing with this humiliating the United States in order to humiliate the secretary of state who is now going to go to Beijing and probably be read the riot act by the Chinese."
The Biden administration on Friday indefinitely postponed Blinken's trip to China after the balloon incident, according to the State Department.
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