great health. you know, it s a growing topic of conversation. we ve seen a number of stories written about it in recent days. the age is what his age is. there is no challenger and there s not going to be one. the timeline suggests the president will announce his re-election bid in the next month or two. that s why we see him making speeches such as the one he did yesterday, trying to reassure the public he has the mental acuity to lead the country, regardless of his age and regardless of concerns about aesthetics. give us a sense of the reaction. we finally heard from the president yesterday about the series of unidentified objects the u.s. has shot down. one, yes, chinese spy balloon. the other three, they re not quite sure. they don t think they re part of the espionage program. what s been the reaction from both sides of the aisle as to how the administration handled this? well, republicans such as mitch mcconnell, the gop leader in the senate, expressed
milley, others in the white house, john kirby suggesting the second, third, and fourth objects shot down probably weren t part of an espionage program, not from china or anywhere else, you know, that were shot down because of just this heightened awareness of these objects in the wake of that first balloon, which of course was linked to china. and we heard from senators yesterday coming out of a classified briefing limited to what they could say, but to a person, respirator democrat, alike, they said they were relatively satisfied from what they heard from the administration as to why they took this course of action. i think we ll hear now the president explaining similar thinking here. they know this has become questions and yes, some punch lines over the last week or so, and they want to try to clarify that, set the record straight while finally, importantly, they do want to start to ease tensions with china. things with beijing have been very tense since that first balloon was shot
been either commercial objects or at least were benign. there s no indication at this moment that these are connected to the chinese government s espionage program. it also is worth noting that this is a president who in the past when he has made unscripted comments about china has raised certain alarm bells say, especially as it relates to taiwan. so the white house clearly wants the president to be able to speak from a position of authority. a position of being able to provide information to the american people that at the moment, the administration itself doesn t have. thank you for that. now to michigan state university where classes are paused after the horrific shooting that claimed the lives of three students. maggie, we talked last hour about the details of the investigation. tell me now about the students. the ones you ve seen and had a chance to talk to. how are they coping? reporter: yeah, chris, unfortunately, they re kind of
today, the house of representatives unanimously approved a resolution condemning china over its spy balloon entering u.s. air space. the fbi announced they are in the early stages of examining the remnants of the shot-down spy craft. officials told lawmakers some of what they ve learned, including the revelation that the balloon was capable of monitoring u.s. communications and was just part of a larger multi-continent chinese espionage program. cnn s natasha bertrand is in washington with details. what are you learning? yeah, victor. so we are learning more about the balloon s actual capabilities here. according to a senior state department official who briefed lawmakers earlier today, that balloon that was shot down on saturday was actually capable of collecting signals intelligence, which essentially means that it was potentially able to collect intelligence about
shot down chinese spy balloon. officials now say the balloon was, indeed, capable of monitoring u.s. communications and was part of a larger mu multicontinent chinese espionage program. i m joined now by chris stewart. he represents utah and serves on the intelligence committee. congressman, thank you so much for joining us. you have been briefed thus far and republicans and democrats seem a bit divided as to whether now knowing what they do whether the u.s. acted accordingly given what we know about this spy balloon. where do you stand? did the u.s. do the right thing by waiting until it was off the u.s. mainland. that was better perhaps than shooting it down while it is over our mainland. there was a threat to people on the ground were that to happen, but i think where we made a mistake was not to intercept the balloon before it entered our airspace. we were monitoring it for days and know with a fair degree of accuracy where it was going to be and we should have intercepted and de