anita: i don t know, even mainstream media outlets are slamming the timing of the release, one reporter calling it the very definition of a holiday news dump and still no word from the president on the matter. john: americans are still seeking answers to why president biden green lighted the withdrawal of all u.s. troops so quickly, even when his top generals advised against it. no one told your military advisers, no, keep 2500 troops. an no, no one said that to me that i can recall. i recommend we maintain 2,500 troops in afghanistan. withdrawal of the forces would lead to the collapse of the afghan military forces and eventually the afghan government. i m confident the president heard all the recommendations and listened to them very thoughtfully. anita: the white house sounding defiant in yesterday s briefings, even defending the withdrawal that killed 13 u.s. service members. children being killed, people hanging off of air force jets
american interests and benefit the world, but make no mistake about it. as we made clear last week, if china threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country, and we did. was that the appropriate way to address this issue, and do you think that message was sent and received by the chinese? i think it was a fantastic way to address this. short and to the point. we re not intimidated by you, china. you gave us a problem, and we take care of it, and the president followed the best military advice to take care of this balloon, and that s something that every american needs to know. there s a lot of critics out there saying the president should done something differently. should have shot it down earlier. at the end of the day what we learned he listened to his top military advisers. that s exactly what we want a commander in chief to do. we know that these balloons have now been spotted over countries across five continents over the past few years. speaking of last night
of how are we respecting to what is the rise of a real competitor, peer competitor and it feels somewhat like to me like a reaction based on optics, domestic politics, biden administration, worried about what the republicans were saying. the idea that the secretary of state should postpone a visit to china for this so knowing what you know now. in terms of president even coming out yesterday and saying he made this call on wednesday, but then his military advisers say wait until it is over water, because i know you did come out strongly on friday saying it was a mistake to postpone the secretary of state tony blinken s trip to china. knowing what you know now, given we don t know everything about what was behind the president s decision or the timing of it, do you believe that it would have been wise for the secretary of
take care of that, and of course, president biden has been briefed on this matter, since tuesday, and it has been receiving continual updates from his team, including military advisers. initially advisers had suggested not to shoot down the balloon while it was over land. of course there were concerns about what that might do, regarding debris and the impact that it could have on the ground. but certainly, over the course of last few day, the president has been trying to weigh all of these options about how exactly to address this balloon. as you mentioned, there have been spottings of it, now, over north carolina, as it is potentially moving out closer to sea. so we will see what else the white house and the pentagon might have to say over the course of the day, about the options that are currently on the table. the officials have said that they have not removed any options about how they are going to address this spy balloon, and president biden just moments ago making clear, saying
reporter: so the president has been weighing, along with his military advisers, for the last couple of days since they found out about this balloon, what to do about it. do you let it float away, shoot it down, take it apart and see what kind of equipment it has inside of it. this has been the subject of all of the calls and meetings that he s been having with his national security team. and we were told that even though he was originally advised against shooting down the balloon because of the risk that it potentially posed to civilians on the ground, that option was never taken off the table. but the issue was taking it down over land where it could potentially hit a building or civilians. now that it seems that it is going over water the president probably felt more confident saying that he was going to take care of it. now, remember that he has been under intense pressure by republicans on the hill to do something about this balloon. they have been calling on him to