President Biden said nothing Friday about the Chinese spy balloon floating over the US and instead repeatedly shared a stale anecdote about his travels with Chinese President Xi Jinping — after going on a bizarre tangent about first lady Jill Biden supposedly cheering on a hockey fight.
Biden chose to ignore reporter questions at the White House and en route to Philadelphia about the escalating spy-balloon tensions, before mentioning Xi by name in both private and public remarks to Democratic National Committee members.
The invocation of Xi’s name came without a mention of the balloon that’s currently hovering over the heartland and instead was a rote telling of a well-worn and questionable tale about how Biden told Xi that the US is the land of “possibilities.”
“I’ve always believed you could define America in one world. I spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping when I was vice president,” Biden said in his evening speech to DNC members.
“I traveled 17,000 miles with him. I met with him more than any other world leader, now over 80 hours, 68 of which are in person,” Biden said. “We were in [the] Tibetan Plateau and he looked at me and said, ‘Can you define America for me?’ I mean it sincerely, I give you my word as a Biden. And I said, ‘Yes, one word, possibilities.’ That’s why we in many cases are viewed as the ugly Americans, because we think anything is possible.”
Biden gave an almost identical rendition of the same story — again without mention of the balloon — at a private reception before taking the stage.
Hours earlier, Biden again failed to mention the balloon during a lead-pipe-focused event in Philadelphia — after also ignoring the matter during a morning White House speech on the January jobs report.
In his lead-pipe speech, Biden instead told viewers that he witnessed an unexpectedly aggressive side of the first lady.
“She’s a Philly girl. So the first thing I’m going to say is Go Eagles! Fly, Eagles, fly!” Biden said, alluding to the Feb. 12 Super Bowl between the Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. “The good news is I happened to mean it, but if I didn’t I’d say it. You know why? Otherwise I’d be sleeping alone.”
“My wife hates violence, she says,” Biden went on. “But I told [Sen.] Bobby Casey this: We went to a Flyers game a couple years ago … and the Secret Service is in a box next to us and anyway, and there’s a fight that breaks out and my wife, who hates violence, goes, ‘Hit ’em! Get ’em!’ She was jumping up and the Secret Service looked [like], ‘Where the heck did that come from?’”
The first lady’s spokespeople did not immediately offer comment on the account.
The Bidens attended Flyers games during his vice presidency, meaning it’s possible the account is true — though the 80-year-old president has a habit of sharing false, unverifiable or embellished personal anecdotes while attempting to establish a connection to his audiences.
The commander in chief, whose family has had extensive business relations with Chinese government-linked entities, has not publicly uttered a word about the jarring and brazen espionage by Beijing.
The Pentagon and State Department said Friday that the balloon is a snooping device, not an errant weather balloon as China claims.
Biden is facing pressure to shoot it down — though White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that he decided not to do so after the Defense Department warned of possible civilian casualties.
