happening now, mass destruction in more than 3,400 people dead after a powerful earthquake, and dozens of after o armageddon. stand by for new reporting on the catastrophes in turkey and syria as rescuers search for survivors and the death toll keeps rising and rising. also tonight, u.s. officials reveal new information on the size, cape abilities and the vae of the downed balloon. amid rising u.s./china tensions, and as president biden faces new international emergencies, he s also engaged in last-minute preparations for his state of the union address. we ll tell you what the president just said about his prime time speech to congress and the nation a little over 24 hours from now. welcome to our viewers here in the united states, and around the world, i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. let s get right to the unfolding earthquake disasters in turkey and syria and its truly devastating toll. cnn s jomana karadsheh is in istanbul. one of the most powerful quakes t
the question was did president xi know about this balloon? look, i don t know this from intelligence, but common sense very clearly indicates of course he knew. this was a very prostvocative a on china s part. they knew we would know this balloon was there. they knew it was during the very time that secretary blinken was going to be in china. that wuasn t just a coincidence they clearly could have launched it at a different time. i think they were making a very bold political statement, and to compare that with minimal surveillance or other intelligence we may have received, i think it s a terrible tradeoff. we should have never allowed, either militarily or from an intelligence point of view, but more importantly from a political point of view, we should have never allowed this balloon to enter our airspace, and remain there as long as it did. congressman chris stuart, thank you so much for joining us. thank you. kcoming up, president biden is gearing up for his highly anticipat
extreme when you bring that up. we have what we need right now. anything related to future actions involving fema we ll get a sense of in the morning, at first light. i m not convinced i don t think we got to hurricane-force speeds here. you know, of course it s anecdotal when you have somebody in his house gauging it against what he hears. but just different media sources, maybe 50, 55 miles an hour. so it wuasn t quite what we expected, and the damage should follow suit. mayor benson, i m glad to hear you re well, it sounds like the folks in your community are well, and we hope that everybody has a chance to get back out on the beach saturday and sunday. thank you so much, mr. mayor. appreciate you staying up with us. thanks for having me. appreciate your time. there are a lot of folks in
country by car. so without getting a passport stamp that you were. there could be things in the law officer that demonstrate that. i think we will figure out whether he was or wuasn t in pra prague. let me ask you about the raids. it seems that there s a great deal of concern here. book ending allover this is cohen may have taped a lot of conversations he had. how worried should he be? if he is the fixer and has been paying off not only mistresses but has been involved in traps actions with russia perhaps there s good reason.