President Joe Biden "missed a lot of opportunities" in this week's State of the Union speech to address China, the spy balloon incident, the border, and more, Rep. Brian Babin said on Newsmax Thursday.
"Every day we turn around, China is doing more stealing our technology, creating problems for us, infiltrating with TikTok and other devices to come into our universities and our research programs," the Texas Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration's response to the balloon, which was shot down Saturday after traveling across the continental United States, was a "debacle" that was almost on par with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, said Babin.
"A Chinese spy balloon, 200 feet tall with an enormous array of technology dangling from the bottom of it ... allowing it to completely cross the continental United States, and it took four days from his order to shoot it down for them to do so?" said Babin. "They shot it down over the wrong ocean. They should have shot it down over the Pacific before it got over us."
But Biden, he added, "is weak and vacillating."
"He never projects great strength," said Babin. "This is why we have an invasion of Ukraine by [Vladimir] Putin. This is why we have adventurism, and reckless activity by the Chinese because we do not have a strong leader … it's very detrimental for the United States' interests."
Meanwhile, Congress is being briefed Thursday about the shot-down spy balloon, and Babin said he's expecting to hear that "this is a big program that the Chinese have maybe had for a long time."
However, he said he "simply cannot get to the bottom of a statement by the administration that three such balloons entered U.S. airspace when former President Donald Trump was in office."
"I've talked to a number of Trump officials [and] they haven't heard a thing about this," said Babin, adding that he expects to hear some "eye-opening things" about the Chinese in the hearing.
But he said he wonders what has to get worse with the Chinese before action is taken.
"In our space program, they're breathing down our necks," Babin said, noting that China's consulate in Houston was closed after espionage was reported around the Johnson Space Center and the Texas Medical Center.
"Of course, the Chinese always become indignant when you catch them with the hands in the cookie jar, red-handed, and try to throw them out," said Babin. "You know that they're going to retaliate … yet when we closed the consulate, we saw video footage of Chinese consulate workers and employees throwing documents into burning barrels."
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