Jill Biden praises Joe and the military for shooting down China’s balloon
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Jill Biden praised her husband Joe Biden’s decision Saturday to shoot down a Chinese balloon suspected of spying on the United States.
The First Lady, speaking at a clinic that provides free mental health services to active duty military and veterans, praised the military for its work, including its care to ensure that no civilians were injured.
“We are more aware of the military when we are in times of war, but now we are in times of peace. And, just like this morning, if any of you were watching TV, where you were following, you know, the China globe, and we saw the effort that our military put in,’ he said during his visit to the Steven A. Military Family Clinic. Cohen at Veteran’s Village in San Diego.
“I was so proud of the effort and that our military, you know, shot down the balloon, how coordinated it was, how considerate it was, that it was decided to wait until it was over the water so the civilians wouldn’t be there.” It didn’t affect me,’ he added.
She said that she had spoken with President Biden before arriving at the event.
Jill Biden praised President Biden and the military for shooting down a Chinese balloon
The first lady also spoke of her hopes that incidents like these help Americans keep service members in mind.
And she noted that she and President Joe Biden pray for the military every night over dinner.
‘I hope that most Americans, I hope that when they see that they really think about, you know, our military. I mean, Joe and I think of them every day, we hold them in our dinner prayers,” he said.
Jill Biden visited the clinic as part of her Uniting Forces Initiative, which focuses on all aspects of health and supports members of the military and their families.
She said the decision to add a mental health aspect dates back to the Obama administration, when she and Michelle Obama first started the initiative.
His son Beau, a veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015, suggested adding mental health services.
“We have to support our army also in peacetime. And when my son Beau was in Iraq, he saw soldiers who were there multiple times, multiple deployments, and he saw the effect that the war had on the soldiers and when he came home, I remember we were in the kitchen and I said, Beau, I was telling about the Joining Forces initiative that Michelle Obama and I started and I said, What do you think we should work on? And he said, mom, you know, I’ve seen so many soldiers on so many deployments that he said, I really think you need to work on mental health.
And that struck me, you know, I just didn’t expect him to say that,’ he noted.
President Joe Biden also congratulated the military for shooting down the balloon.
An F-22 Raptor from Langley Air Force Base shot down the balloon with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2:38 p.m., detaching its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting into the ocean off Myrtle Beach.
“I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible without harming anyone on the ground. They decided that the best time to do it was when he was above the water.
“They successfully shot it down and I want to congratulate our airmen who did it,” he said.
The balloon was seen to burst at 2:38 p.m. and its payload, the metal structure carrying its cameras, appeared to have separated as it plummeted into the Atlantic off Myrtle Beach.
They told me let’s wait for the safest place to do it'” class=”blkBorder img-share” style=”max-width:100%” />
Biden (boarding Air Force One this morning in Syracuse, New York) told reporters: ‘I told them to shoot it down on Wednesday. They told me let’s wait for the safest place to do it’
Footage showed the plane howling towards the spy plane before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the shoreline.
Defense officials estimated that the balloon was about the size of three buses and that any debris field would be considerable.