GOP Sen. Schmitt: China ‘Not Messing Around’ – ‘They’re Playing for Keeps’

On this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” freshman Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) warned that the United States needed to take the threat of China seriously.

He alluded to the alleged Chinese spy balloon and the argued they were gathering “important intelligence” on the U.S. military and President Joe Biden.

“So let’s get to what’s going on in terms of the China-U.S. relationship,” Bartiromo said. “Can you do anything in your role on the Senate in terms of the most favored trade status? And what is your reaction to the U.S.’ response to China’s provocations?”

“Well, I think we need to reevaluate all those relationships,” Schmitt replied. “We’re not having fair trade at all with China. And so that — everything needs to be on the table. There’s no doubt about that. But you just heard the clip from Joe Biden about sending a message. Look, the message right now is, China’s our chief adversary. There’s no doubt about that. They have plans for world domination. And we got to take that seriously, absolutely seriously, like, seriously as a heart attack seriously. And we’re not doing that right now from the Biden administration. I mean, China’s built islands in the South China Sea, and it’s not for people in Beijing to go on vacation. They have militarized these islands. They have anti-ship weapons systems. They have anti-aircraft weapon systems on those islands now, not only to disrupt trade, but for military purposes.”

“On top of that, now, you had a Chinese spy balloon traverse across the continental United States, including over my home state of Missouri, over Whiteman Air Force Base, home of the B-2 stealth bomber, over St. Louis, where you have the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” he continued. “I mean, they are not messing around. They’re playing for keeps. And, Maria, not only were they gathering important intelligence on our military installations. They were gathering important intelligence on Joe Biden, what he would do, how quickly he would do it, and he failed on every front.”

“You have got that on the heels of the Afghanistan withdrawal, where we lost servicemen, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment,” Schmitt added. “He cares not at all about the porous open Southern border, the sovereignty of our own border. And now you have our airspace being violated by the Chinese, this — our very sovereignty. So the Biden administration is not taking it seriously. We need to take it seriously. They are our chief threat. We need to treat them like that.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor