Chinese Spy Balloon Is Potential Security Threat, But Reaction from Right Is Seen as ‘Nativist’ and ‘Isolationist’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” host Alex Wagner reacted to the Chinese spy balloon by stating that “there has been a degree of alarm on the part of the right as far as it concerns this balloon and China in general that I think a lot of people see as unnecessarily nativist, unnecessarily isolationist.” And asking Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) about conspiracy theories about the balloon.

Wagner asked, “I think you have very nicely articulated your concerns about this, the threat — potential threat here that you see in terms of national security, but there has been a degree of alarm on the part of the right as far as it concerns this balloon and China in general that I think a lot of people see as unnecessarily nativist, unnecessarily isolationist. Do you have any thoughts about the people who have been saying, oh, this balloon could be from Wuhan, it might be filled with COVID or any number of paranoid conspiracy theories that, as of right now, seem largely unfounded? Do you have thoughts on that kind of rhetoric at this moment?”

Tester responded to Wagner’s concern about the risks of a nativist reaction to a spy balloon from a foreign power floating over the United States and conspiracy theories regarding the Chinese spy balloon over U.S. airspace by stating, “Well, the worst thing we could do is play politics with our national security. That’s absolutely a nonstarter. The second thing is, we need to get to the truth and we need to find out with the truth is. There [are] all sorts of theories and ideas and thoughts out there by different people who don’t know what they’re talking about. The bottom line is, we want to have people come to this hearing that do know what they’re talking about and can justify what’s going on and what has happened and how many times this has happened before where we’ve had a surveillance balloon potentially fly over this country. And so, it’s — look, conspiracy theories can go all over. There is one thing that I believe to be a fact, that China is our pacing threat in this world. We need to treat it as such. And so, when they send a surveillance balloon over this country, it isn’t to pick up information on the weather. It’s to surveil us. It’s to pick up secrets, to find out what we’re doing. This is our airspace, not theirs. That is completely improper to do. And we just need to get the military in to tell us what the actions — why the actions that were done were done and find out what’s going to happen in the future, if this happens again.”