WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday addressed concerns about the decision by President Joe Biden to shoot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon, which landed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Harris was asked why the U.S. shot down that apparatus and other aerial objects when the federal government had no policy in place.
“As it relates to the Chinese balloon, we shot it down because it needed to be shot down, because we were confident that it was used by China to spy on the American people,” Harris said in Germany, where she is attending the Munich Security Conference. The vice president also repeated President Joe Biden’s remarks Thursday that the administration wants to sharpen the rules to address unidentified objects and help institute global standards on the issue.
When asked about the impact of the incident on U.S.-China relations, Harris emphasized that Biden has reached out to the Chinese about the incident and is expected to speak to President Xi Jinping.
“We will maintain the perspective that we have in terms of what should be the relationship between China and the United States,” she said. “That is not going to change, but surely and certainly that balloon was not helpful, which is why we shot it down.”
Harris added when asked why the administration didn’t take action before the balloon crossed into the U.S.: “We wanted to do it in a way that would ensure that there was no harm to the American people, but in a way that we could also preserve what we could then investigate from a forensic perspective.”
Harris’ remarks come after Biden said in an exclusive interview with NBC on Thursday that he did not think it was an overreaction to shoot down three unidentified objects over North America in the days after taking down the Chinese spy balloon.
Biden also said he plans to speak with Xi, but declined in the interview to say when.
“I think the last thing that Xi…
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