over montana, all these sensitive military installations, air force bases, icbm fields, that s unprecedented. that it flew briefly over the continental u.s., that s one thing. this week, this is unprecedented. we ve never seen this. this is no comparison to anything that may have happened up to this point. your colleague and friend republican tim scott of south carolina accused president biden of, quote, dereliction of duty by allowing the chinese spy balloon to fly across the u.s. that s a pretty strong accusation. do you agree with it? well, i think the dereliction of duty begins with this, why not tuesday or wednesday you know people are going to see it. they didn t twoont have their hand forced on canceling the blinken visit so they didn t want to have to talk about it. why didn t the president go on television and basically explain what we re dealing with here and
the existence of balloons is not a mystery to people in that field. what we ve never seen, what is unprecedented and whoever the source is at the department of defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over idaho, over montana, all these sensitive military installations, air force bases, icbm fields, that s unprecedented. that it flew briefly over the continental u.s., that s one thing. this week, this is unprecedented. we ve never seen this. this is no comparison to anything that may have happened up to this point. your colleague and friend republican tim scott of south carolina accused president biden of, quote, dereliction of duty by allowing the chinese spy balloon to fly across the u.s. that s a pretty strong accusation. do you agree with it? well, i think the dereliction of duty begins with this, why not tuesday or wednesday you know people are going to see it. they didn t want to have their hand forced on canceling the b
remain in u.s. air space floating across the country for the next few days. they will continue to watch it and keep all options open. meanwhile back here at the state department, secretary of state antony blinken saying he will reschedule his trip to beijing when conditions allow. what those conditions are precisely, they will not say. it s clear that the temperature between the u.s. and china does need to come down for that trip to happen. cnn, at the state department. ripley is following this story from thaiwan. we that beijing is clauming it s a weather balloon. what more are they saying? reporter: they are saying this was an accident. and it is a believable explanation when you think of the greater context of the importance of this blinken visit that has been postponed. a visit that beijing has been preparing for ever since november. that meeting at the g-20 where they talked about the importance of communication to avoid miscalculation and missteps and
let the thing die down. is it, in part, that this reaction has been driven by the publication in the united states, just a couple of days before, of this memo, apparently written by a senior general, predicting the possibility of china and the united states being in armed conflict by 2025 over taiwan. yes. look, everybody knows that there is a possibility of armed conflict over taiwan. the general concern was relying on what he called his gut to put the date on it. and a lot of people, including myself, tend to disagree. we re in a very delicate situation over taiwan. and that was one of the things that it was hoped that the blinken visit might at least get under control. there s a confrontation over taiwan, but the danger is, that without open communications, a confrontation can produce an incident and an incident can produce a crisis. so it really was quite important for both sides. and i think that the chinese were quite keen on the blinken visit.