president biden ordering the u.s. military to take down another high altitude object that was hovering over the u.s. we re told it was flying about 40,000 feet making it a threat to commercial airplanes. this coming less than a week after the u.s. shot down that chinese spy balloon. i want to bring in cnn national security reporter natasha ber trn, military analyst and retired air force colonel cedric leighton. great to have all of you. natasha, tell us what your latest reporting is on what happened today. yeah, alisyn, this was a big surprise by u.s. officials today. white house official john kirby he came to the podium and went through all his talking points and in the middle of the briefing he kind of sprung on everyone this had happen. essentially what happened off the coast of alaska on thursday night there was an object that was spotted, and it was unclear what that object actually was, but it was flying at a very concerning altitude, around 40,000 feet, just at that
pretty soon it s going to be built into google. and these are months away not years away. again, i thought my job is to prepare for that, make the best out of it, help them leverage it, not just to figure out if they re hiding it from me. professor johnson, what do you think of that? well, i mean, i don t have a problem with what professor lawrence is arguing. what i do have a problem with is that my job as an educator and as an educator for almost 30 years at this point is to teach my students to think critically, to make logical, coherent arguments. and to do that they need to actually be doing the research. they need to be putting in the time. they need to be reading the articles or the books that may be cited within an essay. and i actually do think that professor lawrence has a good point, that there will be practical applications for this. but when i m trying to prepare
think you see the iq drop, the inhibitions drop when you don t have an adult in the room bad things happen. it gets scary. i do think i think if something bad is to happen again, if america is on the threshold of anything dangerous, it s not coming through well-plotted thoughtful overthrows of the government that you would see in a fancy hollywood movie. it s coming from stupidity and dumb actions. i m not hearing people make coherent arguments. i m hearing people getting together and they re making dumber arguments than they would alone. well, that s how lynch mobs happen, right? what do you make of the fact that there are now people who oppose things like toni morrison books and biographies of reverend dr. martin luther king jr., are now talking about actually burning books. well, i will say i don t usually get into too many literary conversations with the folks at trump rallies.