bill hemmer, good morning, partner. dana: i m dana perino and this is america s newsroom. we made it to february. bill: we did. dana: a little long month that one of january. defense secretary lloyd austin will hold a news conference later this morning. anticipates building for his first major address since his secretive hospital stay. he is expected to face questions on many issues, not least his health. bill: payback against iran. what form does it come? questions swirling about the size and timing of the u.s. response after the deaths of three american soldiers and the wounding of dozens of others by an iranian proxy group out of iraq. all this with another group expanding their targets from the red sea to the air. dana: jennifer griffin is live at the pentagon to set it up for us this morning. you will have a front row seat this morning. we will. dana, this is the first time that the press has had an opportunity to question defense secretary lloyd austin abo
tonight. a foreign policy stumble. the biden administration sending two senior officials to china yesterday the exact day the tin men square anniversary. we don t know to this day how many people were killed. recognizing that atrocity still forbidden in china. tom cotton says this official visit sends exactly the wrong message. biden administration officials should stop chasing after the chinese communist counterparts like love struck teenagers. it is embarrassing and pathetic. it projects weakness to china and encourages them to do things like buzz our aircraft or come within a few hundred yards of our ships and encourages them to send spy balloons all over america. john: there has been 0 direct communication between biden and xi since the u.s. shot down the china aircraft in our airspace earlier this year. jake sullivan down playing tensions. the desire on both parts to put a floor under the relationship, to manage the competition responsibly and insure competition do
the republican field getting bigger and angrier. matt is live with the highlights. three additional candidates are announcing their bid for the white house this week including former vice president mike pence who is taking on his old boss. it was fireworks at the view as republican candidate tim scott took on sunny over previous comments made about him. understanding systemic racism african-americans face in the country and other minorities. he doesn t get it. i feel like that s an oxy moron. scott fired back explaining how conditions improved in the united states. siting a black president, a black vice president, and dropping numbers. you said you didn t believe in systemic racism. one thing i think about are because of the comments made on the show the only way for a young african-american kid is to be the exception and not the rule. that s a dangerous and offensive message to send to our young people. it will be a busy week. three presidential candidates are
about. alexandria hoff joins us. it was virginia, maryland, people in d.c. what the heck was that noise. yeah, there was a bit of panic. you saw it social media on social media. people captured it on their home cameras in the d.c. area there can be reason to be concerned when you hear something like this. let me say, this is a story that would have been heart breaking all the same had this this plane simply and quietly crashed in central virginia. pilot list flight thousands on the ground they heard that boom and knew something had gone wrong. [explosion] some say that it shook their home. according to norad the sound came after f-16 jetsy scrambled and authorized to travel at super sonic speeds. intercept a private aircraft began to breach the airspace around 3:20 p.m. the pilot of the cessna unresponsive crashing before 4:00 p.m. in central virginia according to state police. now here is fox news jon scott also a licensed pilot speaking to the plane s unusual flight pa
of our destroyers. no call for that. it is unsafe, it is unprofessional. martha: john kirby also called the move in a later comment increasingly aggressive, so what does all of this mean. i will talk to former defense secretary mark esper standing by with his thoughts, and eric shawn with the latest news on this in new york. hi, eric. hi, martha, showing that they are showing an increase level of aggressiveness against the assets in the pacific. after the chinese warship intercepted a u.s. guided missile destroyer in the taiwan strait, the shocking incident happened on saturday and crossed dangerously close to the ball of our ship. and then there was this, passing the surveillance plane occurred ten days ago causing the cockpit and our guys, they had to shake because of the turbulence. and the white house at the last hour, saying that the administration in his view is to prepare to face beijing s growing aggression. when you have pieces of metal that size whether it is