this object has been described as roughly the size of a small car, much smaller than the suspected chinese spy balloon which the air force shot down last saturday. to say it was shut down to say nothing from the facts that comments from the podium at the white house today is raising questions tonight. it was downed off the alaska coast, again, about the size of a small car. it had been seen flying at approximately 40,000 feet and was deemed to pose a reasonable threat to aircraft and other civilian operations. still, there are few answers about the object, even as the white house attempts to draw distinctions between this episode and the episode i previously mentioned last saturday. now, we are told that the president based on the advice of the pentagon believed it posed enough of a concern that it needed to be shot down. he ordered it, and it was. asked about the intradiction, the president said simply it was a success. we re going to remain vigilant about the skies
people that opportunity that we ve been talking about to be the anti-trump alternative or the alternative to trump if that s going to be you. there s a lot of folks out there with more than people would think. someone like tim scott from south carolina has a lot of money in his war chest. there s a new super pact that started. that s someone whose name i m watching. it s going to get wild. martha: all right. well-said. final word on this subject. south carolina, the example that jessica mentioned. in tim scott were to run, nikki haley and the governor of south carolina who is backing donald trump, that palmetto stay could be one to watch. thank you very much. we re keeping track of objects and balloons and intelligence hearings right now. let s say sometimes when people are briefed, they don t always hear the same thing or react the same way. aishah hasnie following that. aishah? hey, neil. good afternoon to you. that s right. so this classified briefing
we re going to remain vigilant about the skies over the united states, and as i said earlier, um, the president takes his obligations to protect our national security interests and those and the safety and security of the american people as paramount. reporter: the unknown object was shot down in an area with very harsh weather conditions, as you pointed out, trace, where daytime temperatures hovered around 17 below zero during the day which is about when it was shot down. however, there are new questions tonight about just how the white house handled the revelation of the downing of the object to begin with with critics noting that john who handled the briefing didn t voluntarily announce the information and it was only given, you know, especially given what happened last saturday, it was only given to the press after it was asked by a reporter, and that s surprising given this sort of information would seem to be of
minutes, and you saw reporters scramble to get into the room. you can t really tell in the video, but there were a lot of empty seats towards the back of the room, because some of the reporters just weren t here, because there was nothing on the president s schedule today. then the president came in with these members of the border patrol union and spoke briefly and invited them up to make brief remarks. then the president, press secretary and white house communications director all left the room without taking any questions from the reporters who were sitting there. now, as this was going on, there was supposed to be a briefing with the customs and border patrol commissioner today on the record, on-camera briefing where he was going to take questions from reporters about the state of what s going on at the border, but they bumped that briefing, because they were told the white house was doing a briefing instead. so, instead, that briefing didn t happen. they had the president of the u
because some reporters weren t here because this had been nothing on the president s schedule today. then the president came in with these members of the border patrol union and spoke briefly and invited them up to make brief remarks. then the president, press secretary and white house communications director all left the room without taking any questions from the reporters who were sitting there. now, as this was going on, there was supposed to be a briefing with the customs and border patrol commissioner today on the record, on camera briefing where he was going to take questions from reporters about the state of what s going on at the border, but they bumped that briefing because they were told that the white house was doing a briefing instead. so instead, that briefing didn t happen. they had the president of the union come out, but he didn t answer questions either, and no questions were answered today. so while we re waiting for the house to vote on a bill to reopen the governm