"Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Pete Hegseth slammed the Biden administration's delay in downing the Chinese spy craft in February after a new report revealed it had gathered intelligence from U.S. military sites and transmitted information back to Beijing. Hegseth called the revelation "very dangerous" for America, Monday, on "The Faulkner Focus."
PETE HEGSETH: It's really embarrassing for this White House. It's also really dangerous for America. And we want to trust John Kirby or Lloyd Austin or any - you want to. But John Kirby would have known at that point mid-February what we now know because of this report, that it was not just loosely traveling across the United States for a week. According to the report, this Chinese spy balloon was doing figure eight rotations over some of our most sensitive nuclear sites. … So by the time John Kirby is saying this is benign, they would have known the exact flight path. They would have known that it was loitering… They're just cowards and probably liars, because in this particular instance, cowards because they weren't willing to take an action to confront China, which is confronting us around the world in various ways, most nonmilitary. But they'd like to win a war with us before a shot has to be fired. And then they didn't have the courage to just be straight and shoot it down. And then they're not honest with the American people. And then you wonder why we don't trust them… This is a very dangerous thing that occurred. And they waited until Surfside Beach, South Carolina, to shoot it down after the communist Chinese got everything they wanted.
U.S. officials who spoke to Fox News on Monday downplayed the significance of intelligence that the Chinese spy balloon was able to capture from military installations earlier this year as it flew over the country.
The officials said they still stand by original statements that any signals or electronic intelligence the balloon gathered was of "limited intelligence value" and that measures were taken to mitigate Beijing’s ability to collect data while the object was sailing above sensitive sites.
The assurances come following a report from NBC News this morning stating that the balloon was able to gather intel from numerous sensitive American military sites despite efforts from the Biden administration to prevent it from doing so.
The report was based on information from two current senior U.S. officials and a former senior Biden administration official, who claimed China was able to control the balloon to allow it to pass over the sites multiple times while transmitting information back to Beijing in real time.
Fox News' Greg Norman and Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
