you make decisions based on the best information that you have and ultimately you have to come down to some core principles when you are making decisions as commander in chief. and of course, the most core principle of all is safety and security of the american people and our interests. so again, i say to you the short answer to that is no. and frankly, given the circumstances in light of what happened with this spy balloon, wouldn t that be a better outcome if it turns out they were in fact civilian or recreational use or weather balloon and therefore benign, isn t that a better outcome than to have to think about the possibility of greater threats to our national security? so john, i take that to mean you guys don t have any plans to reimburse the bottle cap balloon brigade? i don t know of any plans to reimburse. we more generally speaking, what
different entity, something completely different or benign, but i m not convinced that they re not some kind of surveillance craft of one type or another but we will see. a couple of senators we have spoken with said the president should come out, certainly speak to the american people when he has something new, when he can tell them something more about it, at least the three most recent objects that have been shot down. i was waiting for t ready to write it, but i don t know that we learned anything new that we heard from john kirby and officials close to the president. that s right. john kirby did say earlier this week that it is the preliminary assessment of the intelligence community that these three objects shot down were not being used for intelligence purposes and that they were likely bemine, tbenign, not for hostil
White House officials addressed the difference between three still-unidentified aerial objects shot down by the U.S. in the past week and the massive Chinese balloon that earlier traversed the U.S. with a suspected goal of surveillance.
the white house is trying to give as many answers as they can. they are doing it in a vacuum. they haven t recovered the three most recent objects discovered in the sky. we heard from the national security council spokesperson saying it s very possible that these are harmless objects that have been operated by private companies or research institutes. it could be commercial or research efforts taking place. in his words, it could be that these are, quote, benign. they say there s not any evidence to this point that these were being operated as part of the chinese balloon surveillance program. there s nothing to indicate that these were being operated by any foreign country right now. he again reiterated the fact that these objects were not being operated by the united states government right now. the bottom line, since they don t have the debris, they can t answer does raise questio
White House officials addressed the difference between three still-unidentified aerial objects shot down by the U.S. in the past week and the massive Chinese balloon that earlier traversed the U.S. with a suspected goal of surveillance.