AP
President Biden made excuses for China Saturday, saying that President Xi Jinping never meant to fly a spy balloon over sensitive American military sites earlier this year.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters as he headed to Philadelphia for his first campaign rally of the 2024 election. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
The conciliatory comments came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued a two-day visit to Beijing, his first diplomatic trip there since he called off a planned trip as the balloon made its uncontested three-day journey across US airspace.
“I’m hoping that over the next several months I’ll be meeting with Xi again, and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how … to get along,” Biden added.
The president spoke shortly before before taking off in Marine 1 for a 40-minute aerial tour of cleanup efforts at the I-95 overpass that collapsed in Philadelphia this week.
“There’s no more important project to the country right now as far as I’m concerned,” Biden said as he and local elected officials spoke about the disaster, which has sparked traffic nightmares on the critical interstate artery since a gas tanker truck flipped and burst into flames Sunday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who followed Biden at the podium, promised to have the roadway open again “within the next two weeks.”
But in a garbled minute-long comment, Sen. John Fetterman — dressed in his customary hoodie and gym shorts — praised Biden for his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill as “the jewel, kind of a law, of the infra, infration, infriction bill that is gonna make sure that there’s bridges like this all across America getting rebuilt.”
US-China relations have grown increasingly tense during Biden’s presidency.
Last week, his administration admitted that China has built a spy base in Cuba — after first denying the story — and Blinken was reportedly scolded by Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday during a pre-trip phone call.
Beijing has been illegally militarizing reefs in the South China Sea, is intensifying surveillance of Americans, and has repeatedly threatened to invade democratic Taiwan to forcefully “reunify” it with mainland China — with little response from Biden.
“China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States,” Biden said Saturday, without specifying them.
Biden and Xi have not spoken since February, when two US Air Force fighter jets shot the spy balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean, sparking fury from China.