good day. i m andrea mitchell in washington. we go directly to the pentagon and the briefing on the china spy balloon. because we do not have internet or phone capability in this area of the pentagon for a variety of reasons, our normal call-in options will not be available. for those who have had to call in, we apologize for the inconvenience. however, we will aim to get our briefing transcripts and the audio up as quickly as possible. we will aim to answer your questions through our dod press desk when you send them to us. moving forward, we will look at ways to improve our briefing operations and the facilitation and expect that our regular press briefings will resume in the press briefing room in middle to late may. again, we appreciate your patience and flexibility and extend our thanks to the department of the air force for allowing us to use airman s hall as our temporary briefing home. secretary austin returned yesterday from a very productive series of meetings in
that will be on saturday night live i guarantee it. here is what s important and getting lost in the traffic a bit is i think this is a signal from china. they are very displeased with two things. one is the u.s. being granted access to bases in the northern philippines on the islands effectively closing a string of basing that runs from japan through south korea through the philippines down to australia. they are upset about it. number two, they saw the u.s. marine corps stand up the first new marine corps base in 70 years. it s in guam, camp blaze. it s going to provide the hub of logistics to the spokes of all these other bases. i for one i certainly will learn a lot more in the next few days as director brennan has said. this looks like a signal to me.