During a portion of an interview with NBC News on Monday that was aired on Monday’s broadcast of “NBC Nightly News,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that because “We did what we needed to do to protect our interests” and we “said what we needed to say” to China, the “chapter should be closed” on the Chinese spy balloon incident as long as China doesn’t do it again.
After saying that “senior U.S. officials told NBC News” that the spy balloon “collected intelligence from” U.S. military sites, NBC News Correspondent Janis Mackey Frayer played a clip of President Joe Biden speaking to reporters on Saturday and stating that, in his opinion, the spy balloon incident “was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
She then played a clip from the interview where she asked Blinken, “So, with Beijing, the balloon incident is over, it’s water under the bridge?”
Blinken answered, “We did what we needed to do to protect our interests. We said what we needed to say and made clear what we needed to make clear in terms of this not happening again. And so, as long as it doesn’t, that chapter should be closed.”
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