Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., on Newsmax on Monday lashed out at the Biden administration, charging it botched the handling of the Chinese spy balloon's surveillance over the United States by acting too late.
In an interview on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," Rosendale said had it not been for the people of his state speaking out, the incident may have been kept a secret by the administration.
"I truly don't believe that the administration would even have told us about it had it not been for the folks of Montana recognizing this thing in the sky and making all of these reports," he said. "We had some airports that had stopped flights for several hours."
According to Rosendale, the problem is "this administration won't recognize the threat the Chinese Communist Party … poses on America."
"They're trying to keep all of this information from American citizens," he charged.
Rosendale said when the government did respond by shooting the spy balloon down over the Atlantic off the Carolinas, it lost the chance to gather crucial information.
"Why is it that is it traversed across the Pacific Ocean that it wasn't identified?" he asked. "Why is it that before it reached Alaska it wasn't identified? Why is it that as it was traveling across Canada it wasn't identified? What were the Chinese trying to collect — what data … were they just probing us to see how our reaction would be."
Rosendale said that for whatever reason the spy balloon was launched by China, "the only response" from the White House was "'Oh, by the way, the Trump Administration had some of these same spy balloons.'"
"We are very concerned about the fact that there was a Chinese spy balloon flying across our nation, across some of the most sensitive sites in the country and this administration did virtually nothing about it," Rosendale railed. "And then once it reached the Atlantic Ocean exploded it so that the possibility off retrieving the equipment, and the information that had gathered, is pretty well nil."
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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