from a historic visit by the house speaker nancy pelosi prompting threats of fierce retaliation out of beijing. good morning. it is tuesday. dana has the day off today. i m bill hemmer. welcome back, sandra. good morning. glad to be with you. i m sandra smith. this is america s newsroom. those chinese fighter jets buzzing taiwan airspace amid local reporting now the speaker could be arriving there in a matter of hours. bill: she would be the highest ranking u.s. official to be in that island in 25 years. china sees it as a slap in the face saying the u.s. should not support a country that beijing views as a breakaway province. the white house has not confirmed her trip but maintains it will not be intimidated. here is what nfc spokesperson john kirby said just this morning. we gave her advice and counsel and gave her information and we re helping with her transportation. this is her decision and we support and respect that decision. what we have said is there is no
congressional delegations when they go to areas like taiwan where there can be tensions and brief about what the landscape is, what the potential military consequences could be to such a visit. that is what i m told occurred. the military was not trying to talk her out of going. they were simply briefing her ahead of the visit. we don t have a lot of details. we did see that incredible tallest building in taiwan welcoming speaker pelosi, reaffirming the friendship with the u.s. that is bound to irritate beijing certainly. bill: jennifer, so it has happened and after a week of debating this publicly, whether the government wanted to or not in 20 seconds or less what s the takeaway? what does speaker pelosi come out of taipei with? it is a huge symbolic gesture from the united states of america that the u.s. stands strong with taiwan.
democracy and that makes it more won t go away. they won t into the chinese mainland any time in the foreseeable future. we need to acknowledge that and think what relationship should we have for taiwan in an american strategy with china. bill: do you think beijing is concerned about this? yes or no. absolutely. they should be. every time beijing growls and american foreign establishment says you better not do anything that might irritate beijing. it gets what it wants. there is no give and take. though announce what their view is and everybody says beijing holds a lot of american debt. we ll have to give in. if we put other things on the table. china has declared the south china sea a province of china. that s unacceptable to us. they want to talk about greater american military cooperation