between china and u.s. officials. we re not looking for a cold war. can the u.s. counter rising global threats? i ll speak to congressman michael mccaul of foreign affairs and mike turner of intelligence plus u.n. ambassador linda thomas green fiel field will join us. ohio residents on edge after a train derailment releases dangerous toxins into their community. we need help. are our leaders doing enough to help and prevent the next crash? ohio democratic senator sharrod brown joins me next. former president trump gets his first official challenger for the gop presidential nomination. if you re tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation. who is next? hello, i m pamela brown in washington where the state of our union is trying to keep your friends close and you know the rest. tensions between the u.s. and china on high this morning after a blunt meeting between the two nations top diplomats, the first since the u.s. shot down a suspected chinese spy
out front next, russians say they re being shot at with machine guns by fellow russians. disturbing claims emerging of what s happened inside putin s army tonight as putin s reputed girlfriend breaks her silence. you ll hear what she s comparing to kalashnikov assault rivals. china vows to fight act after their balloon is shot down. live with a report from the ground in beijing. and congressman george santos addressing today the long list of campaign expenses that don t add up, like spending $22,000 in an eye tall van restaurant. that s almost 1,000 orders of the rigatoni bollignasie there. i m erin burnett. out front tonight, russians shooting russians with machine guns. allegations surfacing in this new video tonight. these are russian soldiers detailing the threats and torture they suffered at the hands of other russian soldiers. you see them there. according to the regional government of tuva, which is where they are, part of russia bore dooring monday dole i can t, a s
china s actions were condemned. president biden stressed the u.s. is not seeking a cold war with china and plans to speak to president xi at some point. you heard congressman turner just how the tensions are right now between the u.s. and china, how bad the relations are. what should his message be to xi and do you think that biden is right to try to lower the temperature with china in the wake of this incident? well, remember the balloon was an escalation and it was not forwarded from it mission. it flew over our missile defense sites, nuclear weapons sites and wasn t taken out of the game until the game was over in the atlantic. the reality is that the administration admitted after it had shot down the balloon it should have been more proactive in the three subsequent shootdowns of it did of harmless objects over north america. the adadministration does have t it needs to take and taking this
to handle similar situation. sort of a threat to escalate. do you think that china will escalate the situation? well, their balloon was an escalation, erin. and the fact they say this was a lost weather balloon, then they shouldn t have any concerns about us taking it down. they re certainly not going to get it back. if it s a lost weather balloon. it certainly wouldn t be at a great cost. but it was at great cost. china calculate that they could pull this off and they could garner whatever information they were attempting to get as they crossed our most sensitive missile defense sites and nuclear weapons sites and infrastructure and this is of grave concern. this is a national security risk. china should not be permitted to do this. it s unfortunate that the balloon was permitted to go all the way across the u.s. really, china has been exposed as having these balloons for spying and we re not going to permit it. so you say by the time the balloon was shot down, it had already comp
might have the capability of launching its own drones, sort of miniature drones to do extra surveillance. do you know anything about that? or is there any report to confirm any of that? no. and i ve not been briefed on that but i can tell you and we are supposed to be briefed this week as to what we know. okay. what we can believe is this administration says we don t really know. and if we don t really know how they keep telling the american public this is not a threat, that there was no need to act, it is just extraordinary to me. this administration does not understand the urgency of taking action to protect our national security. what do you believe the actual threat is right now? what are they trying to do? you see this as a simple military exercise by the chinese. absolutely. they didn t go and look at the grand canyon. they went and looked at our nuclear websites and our missile defense sites throughout the country. and whatever was in this huge payload, there wasn t a