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Thursday 9 February 2023

NBC's Andrea Mitchell calls Biden 'politically courageous' for ignoring Chinese spy balloon in State of the Union speech

 NBC's veteran journalist Andrea Mitchell called President Joe Biden "politically courageous" for mostly ignoring the issue of the Chinese spy balloon in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

The military shot down the spy balloon days after it was revealed to the public that it had been drifting across the U.S. Many criticized Biden for not shooting it down immediately after it was identified, but his defenders said there were likely other measures taken to thwart its mission.

Despite the spy balloon making national headlines, Biden hardly mentioned it in his address before both houses of Congress. Mitchell applauded him for his restraint in her analysis on NBC News.

"My takeaway is that he didn't mention the Chinese spy balloon barely at all," she laughed.

"He talked, as you just heard, about competition but not conflict. This was also analogous to his approach to the domestic policy. He wants to be tough on china, but not confrontational," Mitchell continued.

"He didn't apologize for the shoot down when he talked to you all on the lawn just the other day, coming out of the White House, but he was not going to pick a fight with [Chinese] President Xi over this because he knows, and the view of the administration is, that the world expects the United States and China, the two superpowers in the world, to get along, to somehow work it out," she added.

"We have to get along if the world is going to survive," Mitchell concluded.

She went on in the interview with Chuck Todd to call Biden courageous for ignoring the spy balloon.

"What Joe Biden tonight by not taking on China more aggressively was politically courageous, if you will, in terms of the domestic support, because as you know very well, the polling is that 75% of Americans," she said before being interrupted.

"There's no downside getting tough on China, yeah," interrupted Chuck Todd.

"They want a tougher line and the Republicans are in line with that and a lot of Democrats are, and there's gonna be a resolution next week and it's gonna pass with Democratic support," she concluded.

recent poll taken before the State of the Union speech found that only 41% of Americans approve of the president's handling of foreign policy, including the Ukraine war.

Here's the video of Mitchell's comments:

Watch: President Biden delivers 2023 State of the Union address

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