president confirming he gave the order earlier this week, but the military waited until the balloon could be taken down safely away from populated areas. as far as we know at this hour, beijing is claiming this is a weather search balloon. but the pentagon and the secretary of state say it s a surveillance craft, and saying it s unacceptable, and unacceptable violation of u.s. k sovereignty. good to see you, david. all the times you and i have been on trips reporting on the president and china and this stuff, never would i imagine we would talk about a spy balloon that had flown over the u.s. that resulted in the u.s. shooting it down. how remarkable is this? and what does it say about the very tense relationship right now with the u.s. and china? well, in some ways, it s sort of the blast from the past,
balloon from the atlantic ocean. there are also unmanned vessels that can help retrieve it enter br and bring it up to the ship. it s primarily in 47 feet of water. tom, we had you tracking this balloon as it floated over the united states. now there is a very different and also extremely important effort under way right now to track it in the ocean and see if it can be retrieved and examined. yeah, think how far the technology came. if it s right, over the allusions, montana, canada, a third of the distance around the globe, and then it dropped in from a height of roughly 60,000, all the way down here in the water to finally come to a stop here. as best we can tell, just right in about that area on myrtle beach.
today, president biden revealed he told the pentagon on wednesday to shoot down the chinese balloon as soon as it was safe to do so. but there is still plenty of partisan sniping. j.d. vance adding to tweet and photo, and saying now he won t defend our skies and marjorie taylor green saying, it would be great if average joe would shoot it down. because joe won t. joining us now, molly jong. this is not exactly shooting beer bottles of your grand daddy s back porch. i think today we saw the u.s. military handling it in a very professional way.