floating above the continental united states, and we don t know what data it s collecting. you can see it right there on your screen and it s visable to people on the ground in montana. at least it has been since wednesday. today beijing confirmed it is theirs, claiming it is a, quote, unquote, civilian research air ship that went off course, but minutes ago, the pentagon flatly rejected that claim, calling it a surveillance balloon. secretary of state antony blinken s upcoming trip to china has now been postponed. the pro vocative move is inflaming a u.s.-china relationship already on the brink with tensions over everything from taiwan to tiktok. cnn s natasha bertrand is here to break it all down for us. natasha, there is so much to talk about here. so let s start at the beginning. what do we know about this balloon? yeah. so here, just to get a sense for the scale of this thing, this is the balloon, and what we know about it is that it is the size of about three busses.
bowls clay travis smart with an attitude not like bill hammer but won t touch until the seg the start in arizona this weekend i m looking around i m seeing game and sensing game in the festivities around it it is become to record heights so people are here. i m thinking how great it is to have a common focus as a country the super bowl only two cities they re in got it but we re also into this at every level at some level. yes america we can all agree that the super bowl is a great all american event. and excuse to get together and to watch to cheer and just party and just be with family and friends. and whatever you do, give politics a rest. that applies to fox fans and fox anchors. but when this game is done and coaches shake hands at mid-field we ll have a bigger gimme play a game we have to win, think about it you descroangt to tell chief or eagles who they re competing against but i think it is time for our nation to realize we have opponent too who doesn t just want to
you can see the piece on the bottom of it. that is the piece that gathers the intelligence for this what loan. we ve known about this being in the skies over our country illegally for several days at least. some say going back months. so far, we have not done anything to impede this balloon from collecting surveillance over the country even though it s of clear violation of u.s. airspace. no word from the president of the united states at 3:00 eastern time. we ve known about this since last night really. twice now he has avoided shouted questions. watch this. mr. president, when will you remove the balloon? when and how will you remove the balloon, mr. president? [question inaudible] are you worried about the balloon? martha: apparently not worried about the balloon as he walks across the lawn there. we know that it launched this instrument from china. you can see on that quick animation. maybe we can play it again from mainland china. now it has hovered over montana, h
to remove her from the key foreign affairs committee. the democrat calling it an act of revenge by republicans. speaker mccarthy is denying any parti partisan tit for tat and new questions into the beats of tyre nichols after the d.a. told me up to 20 hours of footage is yet to be released. i ll talk with the nichols family attorney, ben crump. welcome to our viewers here in the yunited states and around te world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the the situation roo tonight, ukraine s warnings are growing more ominous and putin s forces unleash new attacks targeting ukrainian civilian areas. fred and sam are on the ground for us in ukraine with firsthand reporting on these new russian strikes. first to you, fred. you and your crew had a very, very close call. walk us through what happened and the current fighting unfolding there in the east. firstly, we certainly did have a very close call. essentially what happened, the night before, there had been a big air strike on a bui
over the western united states. it may have come all the way from china. national security correspondent jennifer griffin has details from the pentagon. hi, jennifer. good evening, gill i can t believe. the pentagon says it has detected and been tracking for the past several days a chinese surveillance balloon that entered u.s. airspace and appears to have been sent bye bye jing to spy on sensitive sites in montana. one of three sites where the u.s. houses it s siloed nuclear weapons. nbc first reported the news. a senior u.s. defense official just briefed reporters on the balloon which is still hovering over the continental united states. adding the u.s. government has very high confidence that this surveillance balloon was sent by the peoples republic of china. the balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. instances of this kind of balloon activity have been