our due diligence in preventing that, and in the end, we will know how successful they were. and general marks, i mean, knowing this, knowing that this balloon had these sophisticated technologies to collect communications, do you think that the president should have ordered it to be shot down earlier? i do. look, we were tracking this as it approached the aleutian aisles. that s american airspace, as well, and i think this was an opportunity for diplomacy to really take center stage. the united states, this administration could have gone to china and said, look, we re tracking your balloon. it s over the aleutians and coming into our airspace on the continental united states shortly. we re going to do something with this unless you can turn this bad boy around and there was the ability to do that but if not we re going to take it down. we just wanted to let you know. we re either going to shoot it down but it will belong to us and have a follow-on
inflicted by the chinese communist on the president. again, we should have shot down this balloon over the aleutians as opposed to letting it float on its merry way. the message to the world is we can fly a balloon over airspace of the united states of america, and they won t be able to do anything about it to stop us. all right. the outrage universal. the reasons specific. but now we are learning more about chinese balloon incidents that have been documented under the trump administration. so phil mattingly is outfront at the white house. these are breaking details. so phil, what do you know now? erin, one of the big questions has been the biden administration s contention that several balloons traverse at least parts of the united states during the trump administration. trump senior officials saying they have no knowledge of these actually happening. and we re actually getting a sense of what the biden administration is talking about. and this comes from our colleague zack co
effect the biden team has inflicted a serious of humiliations on chief arrival they point to semiconductor embargo in china, the philippines expanding access to u.s. military of the things they say section to a job. looks unfortunately humiliation this week was inflicted by the chinese communist on the president. again we should ve shot down this balloon over the aleutians as opposed to quote all across middle america on its merry way. the idea we are letting this go all across america s spy balloon completed spy mission before shot it down i m afraid is an embarrassment to the united states might not an embarrassment to the chinese communists were constantly pushing the envelope. constantly probing to see how far they can get away with these malign actions. and unfortunately they feel like they probably got away with it here. shannon: let s talk about classified documents for numeral briefed about documents found in for president trump, current
republicans in washington are slamming the delay in response, calling this a win for china. i think the humiliation this week was inflicted by the chinese communist on the president. again, we should have shot down this balloon over the aleutians as opposed to letting it float all across middle america on its merry way. the idea that we were going to let this go all across america, let a supply balloon complete its spy mission before we shot it down, i m afraid is an embarrassment to the united states. the defense ministry is protesting the shooting down of that balloon, quoting it was a civilian unmanned airship. a spokesperson said in a statement that china reserves the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations. our chief national correspondent jim sciutto is with us. thank you for being here. you ve been great covering all of this since it was shut down this weekend. what does that mean, necessary
civilians at montana in the billings gazette identified the bullet and pulled the whistle on it. front and then ministration fess up to the american people. took another 12 hours for secretary of state cancel what was already an ill-advised trip. this a lot of answers to provide the american people. quickly ask you about that. you called immediately for the trip to mccann to perform present my pants had a different take shootdown the following to go ahead and send the secretary of state to china sounds better never happen again. that is pace through strength. why not let them go and have a confrontation face-to-face? if they d chosen to shoot down the billing when they should have over the aleutians as soon as it entered our airspace that might ve been worth considering. again president biden was hoping to not take any confrontational action for the chinese. continue the momentum from his meeting with changing paying