Rand Paul says Biden handling of China balloon looks 'very weak'

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) joined the chorus of voices criticizing the Biden administration for its handling of the Chinese spy balloon incident last week that ended after more than a week with the military shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean.

Paul said on the Fox News Channel:

I think it’s appalling. If they want to let us know that it’s an accident, don’t you think they would want to apologize? The fact that they have already got their backup and they’re resisting and talking about retaliation doesn’t sound like much of an apology. If there is an innocent explanation for this — and it doesn’t seem that there is at this point, but if there were, they should be apologizing. But either way, the Biden administration should have the Chinese ambassador come in to speak to the secretary of state, and there should be a full examination of the question.

He said China was likely "probing our defenses" by flying over a number of places in the U.S. for many days, including multiple sensitive military sites.

“So, this looks very, very weak in the eyes of our enemy, and I think was a huge mistake,” he added. “But, at this point, moving forward, what they need to do is, they need to demand a full apology and explanation. If it was supposedly civilian, they should feed us all the data they took in and show us what they — what the — what the balloon was absorbing. And if they’re not going to show us that, we tend not to trust that they’re telling us the truth.”

China has condemned the U.S. for shooting down the balloon and warned that it could take "more actions" because of it.