The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Mysterious Chinese Spy Balloon, January Jobs Report, House of Representatives Pass Resolution Condemning Socialism | Feb. 3

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Mysterious Chinese spy balloon  Conservatives slam President Biden, Defense Department about the Chinese spy balloon U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning socialism The U.S. economy added over 500,000 jobs last month, which exceeded expectations. Relevant Links Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Samantha Sherris. I'm John Pop. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Friday, February 3rd. Here are today's headlines. Many of you have probably heard of the Chinese-owned balloon that is floating above the U.S. right now. Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in the Asian Study Center here at the Heritage Foundation, is with us in studio today to break down what is going on with this balloon. Michael, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me again. Of course. So what can you tell us? What do we know about this balloon that is floating? I think it's over Kansas at this point. Yeah. Well, so it's almost definitely a surveillance of balloon. The Chinese have said, oh, we're so sorry. It's a weather, you know, a weather balloon, a civilian research balloon that has wandered off course. but the Pentagon is pretty sure that it's being used for surveillance. And that is almost clearly what's happening. It is not the first time this has happened. Chinese spy balloons have wandered into U.S. airspace on other occasions,

although we haven't seen it really explode in the media as it has this time. Why do you think that is that there has been, this reaction from the media? Well, I think there's a heavier emphasis on China right now. Everyone is thinking about the China threat, whereas it used to be maybe, you know, places like Washington that we're taking China a bit more seriously. I mean, we have, you know, the land issue in places like North Dakota, where we do have places like Montana where it was spotted that are taking this a lot more,

they're taking China a lot more seriously. I think another thing was this happened right before Secretary Blinken was scheduled to visit Beijing. He was scheduled to go there on Sunday. And I think wisely, the administration has decided to call off that trip. Yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on that because he did decide to postpone that trip. And it sounds like you thought that that was the right move by him. Yeah. certainly. I mean, you know, these visits are important. It is important. It was a good opportunity to help manage tensions. But, you know, I always thought the visit should be occurring in Washington, not in Beijing. And I would recommend that when they do reschedule it, they move it to Washington. But, you know, I just, you know, it was already sort of bad optics for the U.S., which is a

the stronger party and, you know, China needs this visit, especially with the domestic challenges the CCP is having right now. They need it more than the U.S. needs it. And for China then to, you know, with the U.S. going out of our way, send our Secretary of State to China, and now they violate U.S. airspace, U.S. sovereignty with a spy balloon. And it's, you know, the whole world knows that this has happened. It's not acceptable. And so it definitely was not appropriate for the visit to go to go forward as planned. What do you think this teaches us about China and the Chinese Communist Party? Well, I mean, so on one level, it, you know, tells us what we already know, I mean, that China does spy on America. Now, that's to be expected. We are geopolitical adversaries. But

They also, you know, they don't respect the facts. They don't respect our sovereignty. But, you know, on another level, it's been really interesting to see their response to this particular incident. Because about two months ago, they probably would have responded to these allegations very angrily. And we didn't see it this time. What we saw was when the reports first came out, the Chinese side was like, oh, we didn't. are aware of the reports. We were gathering further information. And then they did come back and they acknowledged, oh, yes, it was Chinese, but it was not for spying. And really, the change in

attitude from a couple months ago really shows how much pressure the Chinese leadership is under right now at home, that they feel like, you know, the Chinese are not good at managing problems at home and problems with their diplomatic partners. And so when things are really difficult at home, you do see them try to scale down the tensions that they're having, ease the tensions with the international community. And we're definitely seeing that now. I think it also shows how badly they wanted this visit to go forward, that they really did try to smooth things over.

but thankfully the administration didn't take the bait on this one. Yeah, well, Michael Cunningham, thank you so much for joining us to break this down. I'm not sure how long the balloon is going to be up there. So maybe into the weekend. We'll have you back on next week if there's any more updates. Thanks so much. Thanks. Republicans are sounding the alarm over the balloon and placing blame on both the president himself

and the Defense Department. House Speaker McCarthy tweeted last night that China's brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent. I am requesting a gang of eight briefing. Florida Republican Representative Michael Waltz told the Daily Signal earlier today that America is under assault from Chinese spying, and if the Biden administration refuses to respond, it will send a message to the Chinese military that they can send even more spy balloons inaction invites dangerous behavior. Republican, Kansas Senator,

Jerry Moran tweeted, China invaded U.S. airspace and the Biden administration needs to take action to address this situation. Further delay is unacceptable. I have received reports of a balloon over northeast Kansas, and I am in contact with DOD on what action is being taken to protect Kansas and the U.S. from this threat. Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the Select Committee on China, posted a video to Twitter today about the Chinese spy balloon. Here's part of what he said. Yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed that a suspected Chinese spy balloon was flying over the United States. The balloon had been spotted near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which, by the way, hosts some of our nuclear weapons, and will reportedly remain over the United States for a few days.

In other words, a surveillance device controlled by a hostile foreign adversary illegally entered U.S. airspace, violating our sovereignty, and inexplicably, we are allowing it to continue to fly over the country. I think this is indicative of the growing threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and its aggressive policies. And it's the latest evidence that the CCP's techno-totatitarian vision and strategies are not confined to China's borders and are threatening us here at home. We've barely digested the fact, for example, that the CCP has been running secret police stations in New York City and likely elsewhere. This latest incursion to our sovereignty, of course, comes just days before Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was scheduled to. to meet with General Secretary Xi Jinping, and amidst a CCP charm offensive designed to convince the rest of the world to drop its concerns about the party's malign behavior.

This makes it crystal clear that no matter what the CCP says, they plan to make zero substantive changes to their behavior. The U.S. economy added over 500,000 jobs last month, which exceeded expectations. To be exact, 517,000 jobs were added, while 187,000 jobs. were predicted. CNBC reports. Let's take a listen to some of Biden's comments from this morning via the White House YouTube. Before I head to Philadelphia, I wanted to say a few words about oh, I think it's strikingly good news that we just received. Next week, I'll be reporting on the State of the Union. But today, today I'm happy to report that the State of the Union and the

state of our economy is strong. We learned this morning that the economy has created 500 17,000 jobs just last month. More than half a million jobs in just the month of January. In addition, we also learned that we half a million more jobs created last year than we thought. So the January report is updated. I mean, excuse me, the December report is updated. Add that all up. It means we created 12 million, 12 million jobs since I took office.

That means we have created more jobs in two years than any presidential term. than any time in two years. That's the strongest two years of job growth in history by a long shot. As my dad used to say, jobs about a lot more than a paycheck and spot your dignity. And 12 million more Americans get up every morning knowing they can provide for their families with the dignity and sense of self-worth that have been missing. Rachel Gressler, a senior research fellow in economics budget and entitlements at the Heritage Foundation said in a statement today that job gains were strong in January as more workers filled open positions and striking government education workers returned to their jobs. Yet uncertainty is high and confidence is low as businesses

and investors have increasing concerns about the Federal Reserve's ability to fight inflation that it helped fuel by financing trillions of dollars in government spending. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning socialism on Thursday. Nearly all Republicans and half of the Democrats supporting it, our colleague Tyler O'Neill reports. House continuing Resolution 9, which is a resolution denouncing the horrors of socialism, passed 328 to 86, with 14 Democrats voting present, and six members, three Republicans and three Democrats not voting. Florida Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, the daughter of Cuban exiles,

who represents Miami-Dade County and who sponsored the resolution, told the Daily signal in a statement Thursday, this was a win for democracy. As the representative of the city of Miami and daughter of Cuban exiles, I say this resolution hits close to home for all of us. We know that socialism only brings misery, oppression, and exile wherever it is tried. O'Neill reports that the resolution states that Congress denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America. It does not specifically define socialism but describe socialist ideology as necessitating a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into communist regimes,

totalitarian rule and brutal dictatorship. The resolution also attributes the deaths of over 100 million people worldwide to socialism, including 10 million people sent to the gulags in the Soviet Union, between 15 and 55 million people starving in the wake of the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward in China, 1 million people dead in the killing fields of Cambodia, and up to 3.5 million people starving to death in North Korea. It also notes that socialism devastated the once thriving economies of Cuba and Venezuela. Many prominent Democrats voted against the resolution, including representatives Julian Castro

and Al Green of Texas, Jerry Connolly of Virginia, Summerlee of Pennsylvania, Jerry Nadler and Alexandria, Ocasio Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Talib of Michigan. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's Top News. If you haven't gotten a chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices. Join us on Monday morning for the Daily Signal interview edition. Virginia Allen will be sitting down with Dr. Aaron Carriotti to discuss how, unless placed in check, the government will use public health orders to further its own agenda, whether about, COVID-19, climate change, or abortion.

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