victims in an alleged plot to kill, quote, anyone that is jewish in the michigan government. those words are from a man now in federal custody according to an affidavit. his first court appearance was wednesday on charges of making charges along state lines. and has tweeted the fbi has confirmed i was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter. it s my hope that they take this just as seriously as the federal authorities takes the offense just as seriously as my hate crimes and domestic terrorism unit takes plots to murder elected officials. he has three handguns and one that is an mia military-style weapon, polo sandoval has more. what have we learned? we actually see on the page, linked to jack and jane carpenter ii, the suspect in the case. and not just anti-semitic and quite alarming especially this tweet that federal investigators saw back in february, february 17th to be exact. and what he allegedly wrote, including, quote, he would carry out death to an
floating above the continental united states, and we don t know what data it s collecting. you can see it right there on your screen and it s visable to people on the ground in montana. at least it has been since wednesday. today beijing confirmed it is theirs, claiming it is a, quote, unquote, civilian research air ship that went off course, but minutes ago, the pentagon flatly rejected that claim, calling it a surveillance balloon. secretary of state antony blinken s upcoming trip to china has now been postponed. the pro vocative move is inflaming a u.s.-china relationship already on the brink with tensions over everything from taiwan to tiktok. cnn s natasha bertrand is here to break it all down for us. natasha, there is so much to talk about here. so let s start at the beginning. what do we know about this balloon? yeah. so here, just to get a sense for the scale of this thing, this is the balloon, and what we know about it is that it is the size of about three busses.
is unhappy that what china perceives is red lines on taiwan issues are crossed all the time. it proceeds that the one china policy is being eroded. and delivery of weapons is something very sensitive. so if china believes in this compartmentized nature, that the u.s. moves on the red lines with the weapon sales that china can counter that with issuance of drones, that will be very dangerous because it perceives that the u.s. will back down and not provide military aid to tw taiwan, so we will have backly a proxy war where both will provide weapons to parties at war. but the president has said if china aid ed them that they woud
floating above the continental united states, and we don t know what data it s collecting. you can see it right there on your screen and it s visable to people on the ground in montana. at least it has been since wednesday. today beijing confirmed it is theirs, claiming it is a, quote, unquote, civilian research air ship that went off course, but minutes ago, the pentagon flatly rejected that claim, calling it a surveillance balloon. secretary of state antony blinken s upcoming trip to china has now been postponed. the pro vocative move is inflaming a u.s.-china relationship already on the brink with tensions over everything from taiwan to tiktok. cnn s natasha bertrand is here to break it all down for us. natasha, there is so much to talk about here. so let s start at the beginning. what do we know about this balloon? yeah. so here, just to get a sense for the scale of this thing, this is the balloon, and what we know about it is that it is the size of about three busses. it is very
they know that balloon was maneuvered over montana, undoubtedly i agree with general clark, it s sending back encrypted communications, which means it s not a weather balloon. it s a provocation. the chinese are sending a message and i think the message is, we re getting serious about taiwan, don t get in our way, and by the way, we are capable of targeting your minuteman bases in montana and north dakota. i think the escalation is what concerns me. are we moving closer to a war? we ve had a general come out and say we are two days ago. i m sure this is worrying the administration, and for blinken to cancel his visit to beijing, it means relations with china are very, very bad. bob, do you agree with the general s assessment it should be taken down, considering your evaluation of the pro voccer to