![]() You're also a dad, I know you know how hard it is to keep kids offline on this app called TikTok. You are the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee. This was raised to Xi Jinping in November and there- there hasn't been release to date. MARGARET BRENNAN: And he is wrongfully detained according to the State Department. China, if they want to demonstrate that they're not bad actors, if they want to demonstrate that they can aspire to being a great nation, they should release Mark Swidan because great nations and great powers don't hold political prisoners. He's been there 10 years, they've sentenced him to death on charges for which they have little to no evidence, and- and I had been urging Tony Blinken when he was going to Beijing, to raise Mark Swidan's case and to make the case for Mark to be released. This past week, I introduced a resolution on the floor of the Senate, along with John Cornyn, calling on China to release Mark Swidan. Right now, there is a Texan, Mark Swidan, who is a political prisoner. And what they had discovered about the espionage activities being carried out in the state of Texas by the Chinese government was horrifying. When- when- when the Trump administration shut the Chinese consulate in Houston, I spoke with the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about it. Do you think there needs to be more diplomatic fallout on that scale now? the Trump administration shuttered the Chinese Consulate in Houston after detecting espionage. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the Pentagon has since disclosed that it's apparently happened four times before, never quite like this. That's a bad message for the Chinese government to hear. And at the end of the day, I think the only reason they shot it down is because it made it into the news and they felt forced to as a matter of politics rather than national security. We know that when the Biden administration knew about the balloon, they said nothing, they did nothing, they didn't shoot it down. And to illustrate why I would just ask one- one hypothetical question: imagine how this would have played out if nobody had taken any pictures of the balloon, if nobody in Montana had looked up and noticed this giant balloon, if it wasn't in the news. ![]() And- and more broadly, I think this entire episode, telegraphed weakness to Xi and the Chinese government. He allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States, over sensitive military installations, exposing not just photographs but the potential of intercepted communications. Unfortunately, he didn't do that until a week after it entered U.S.airspace. That is absolutely what the President should have done. CRUZ: Well, listen, I want to start by doing something that I don't do very often, which is commending Joe Biden for actually having the guts to shoot this down. Do you think there is upside to the fact that this was captured this time? MARGARET BRENNAN: So this balloon traversed 11 states, but the Pentagon says they were able to mitigate some of its impact.
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