President Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator on Tuesday when speaking about a spy balloon that the U.S. shot down in February.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said in remarks at a campaign event in Kentfield, Calif., according to a White House pool report. “That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”
Military reports about an unidentified Chinese surveillance balloon traversing continental U.S. made headlines at the beginning of February, sparking bipartisan outrage and concern about foreign intrusion into American airspace. A few days later, an American fighter jet shot the balloon down off the coast of the Carolinas.