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
long national nightmare is over. we got the balloon. i m surprised you re still floating. experts were saying you re the size of three buss? gl. okay. ouch. i m a balloon, so that s my body. how would you like it if someone measured your width in buses. sorry i m not camera ready, oh great, who s this. no, huh-uh. get away. congrats to the snl wardrobe team for being so precise that they even pulled together my outfit from friday afternoon, and to chloe fineman for doing a spot on katy tur. a couple is arrested for planning an attack on baltimore s power grid, what law enforcement says was behind it. first up, a new complaint against already embattled congressman george santos, what a prospective aide said the freshman congressman did. a pros esfrhman congressman did when you shop wayfair s big furniture sale you get deals so big.
joining me now, nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali, and nbc news senior white house correspondent kelly o donnell. let me play for you what republicans are saying about the spy balloon and the administration s reaction to it. the u.s. had to see this coming and decided they couldn t or wouldn t do anything about it early on. imagine how this would have played out if nobody had taken any pictures of the balloon f nobody in montana had looked up and noticed this giant balloon. the president was paralyzed for an entire week by a balloon. the president taking it down over the atlantic is sort of like the quarterback sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. they have their talking points, ali. put this all into context for us politically speaking on capitol hill right now at this moment. well, you re right, katy, if we re talking along political line, republicans are seizing on this moment as an attempt to make it a referendum on joe biden s lead
reconnaissance aircraft monitoring the balloons. some of which have signals intelligence, and electronics intelligence capabilities to monitor what sort of signals the balloon might be sending out and potentially receiving. this gives the u.s. insight into what the balloon is doing, what its capabilities are, and potentially how to counter it. the fact that the u.s. says that there was no significant risk indicates that the department of defense believes they have successfully jammed it or neutralized its capabilities in some way. however, they re not going to be specific about techniques, procedures, and capabilities. no doubt about that, brynn tannehill, thank you very much. the balloon was shot down saturday at 2:35 p.m., at 11:30 p.m., katy tur reports got a live exclusive. good evening, it s good to be with you, i m katy tur, and our
be on the lookout for anything that might wash ashore. joining me now from myrtle beach is nbc news correspondent george solis. what are they doing, and what exactly are they looking for in the water? reporter: good afternoon, katy, we have new reporting on the ongoing recovery efforts. we know that military divers are in the water with robotic equipment to basically survey the area, a debris field that we know is about 15 by 15 football fields wide. you can imagine that s a large area that they have to look at it. we know they couldn t go into the water yesterday because the water and the weather is a bit choppy. we know there s two navy ships out there looking for debris, one of which is using sonar capability to map out the underwater, pentagon saying that a lot of debris fell in shallow water, 42 feet of water. the recovery should be fairly easy. we know there s as many as three