possible explosives to deflate the balloon. gillian: in a moment, karine jean-pierre will be asked questions why the president waited nearly a week to shoot it down. john: we will bring you the white house briefing when it begins. john roberts in washington, good to kick the week off with you. gillian: you, too, john. i m gillian turner in for sandra smith. the president said ordered the military to take out the balloon after it had been drifting for days. they say the military should have listened. he projected weakness at this moment. i think the administration lacks urgency. became a situation of argument and everybody wondering what is the administration doing. this is a wake-up call for the country. gillian: john kirby pushed back, said it gave the u.s. time to study the balloon, as well as chinese s motives. john: seems clear china s motive is to replace the united states as the leading superpower. a list of how china has provoked and escalated tension
good to be with you, i m kay katy tur, the chinese spy balloon is still hanging over the white house. why they didn t know about it sooner and what the u.s. was able to gather about the balloon while it was still in the air. the gang of eight is waiting for a full briefing. the white house has offered one and it s expected to get on the schedule next week. house intel chair republican mike turner said the balloon exposed a weakness at the top. clearly this was an attempt by china to gather information to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapon sites and that certainly is an urgency that this administration does not recognize. i ll know the answer to that question this week when we actually get briefed on the decision making process about when and how to take down the balloon. there s an awful lot of people like me coming to absolutely rock solid conclusions based on very few facts. none of us know what the decision making process
you don t want to miss that. first the bad news. the world has completely turned upside down under our pathetic excuse for a president who doesn t know what day of the week it is. none other than america s hostile enemies now. they have no fear or respect for joe biden. not china, not iran and definitely not russia. putin s thugs, as we talked about last night, took down a u.s. reaper drone over international waters which, in most case, most presidents would view as an act of war. it would be some military response. what did biden do in response? pretty much nothing. actually worse than nothing. the white house started to make excuses for putin s risky behavior. they called it an accident. really? anyone here believe it s an accident? probably was they said it s probably unintentional. probably was the result of a confidence of these russian pilots. does anybody here believe there are incompetent fighter jet pilots that not once, but twice dumped jet fuel on top of our dron
the community in smoke and forced families to evacuate. bill: fears of an explosion had crews conducting a controlled burn of toxic chemicals. officials gave folks the okay to return home. dana: the governor insists it is safe to breathe the air and drink the water but people who live there say it feels anything but safe and voiced their concerns last night. [inaudible]. i don t know what to do other than to provide you assurance for don t lie. i understand. we re doing all that can be done to look for the source of potential bill: representatives from norfolk southern, the company that operates the train that went through town in early february. they were scheduled to be there last night but they pulled out at the last minute we re told citing fears that residents could become violent toward the company. dana: it made people angry that they said that about them when they just wanted to ask questions. pete buttigieg was not there. they re wondering why he is
long journey ends after the u.s. military shoots it down. . we ll look at the job lies ahead as crews work to recover the instruments carried by the balloon, china reacts with china adding an already strained relationship between washington and beijing. live in hong kong and the political fall-out democrats defend the president against republicans who argued biden waited too long. . . . live from cnn center. this is cnn newsroom. with leila hurruck. u.s. military is savage operations are underway right now in shallow waters off the coast of south carolina, where a suspected chinese spy balloon crashed after shot down by a fighter jet on saturday. a reaction from the chinese government has been swift and angry. a foreign ministry statement accused washington of overreacting to a civilian unmanned air ship and the chinese defense ministry warned it reserve theed the right to use, quote, necessary means to deal with similar situations but washington has been skeptical and