america this weekend. kasie hunt picks up our coverage right now. good afternoon. i m kasie hunt here in washington. we re going to begin with the scramble for answers after a u.s. fighter jet were scrambled three days in a row this weekend, shooting down three separate aerial objects that were flying over north america. in just moments, the white house is going to take questions on this deepening national security mystery, as president biden faces increasing pressure to address the nation to explain what exactly is going on and who is behind these incursions. we re going to bring you that white house briefing as soon as it gets under way. but we want to get started right now with cnn s kylie atwood and phil mattingly, who are tracking all of this. kylie, let me start with you at the state department. so much of this is going to depend on what the government recovers from what is shot down. what is the status of this? if they haven t determined the origins of these objects,
the sky, but they ve now had to do it four times in less than two weeks. what the heck is going on? is today the day the white house gives the public some answers. dramatic video out of turkey where this woman was pulled from the rubble after spending 175 hours buried alive. she s not the only one. the stories that are providing flickers of joy in the midst of an escalating catastrophe coming up. nikki haley is poised to become the first republican to take on donald trump and she won t be the last. it s one thing to run. who is ready to actually go after the former president who is already in attack mode. lots to get to. we start with the extraordinary developments in the sky above the u.s. pentagon and military officials are scrambling to answer the question the entire country is asking. what are those unidentified objects we keep shooting down including three in the last three days. we re hoping to get more answers from the white house briefing set to get under way an
Significant threats to our air space puts us in a position of if you try and defend against everything, you defend against nothing. so i mean, the military and intel community are rapidly trying to assess this situation and provide the best advice, but unfortunately, we have too many people giving advice that don t know what these radars provide at norad, and what kind of decision making processes go on in both the department of defense and the white house to address these kind of threats. yeah, i m glad you raised that because it does seem as though there are plenty of normal flocks of birds in the sky. norad, for example, tracks santa claus around christmas time. we can t shoot down everything that we may be picking up. david, let s talk kind of big picture here because you obviously spent a lot of time thinking about our position in the world and how our policies are playing out day to day, and there has been this gradual deterioration of communications
Norad will continue to do their important work. secondly, we are consulting with allies and partners on the challenge of identified aerial phenomenon and how we can all work together to deal with that challenge. the president has directed the secretary of state, secretary of defense, and the director of national intelligence to engage with their relevant counterparts to share information and to try to gain their perspectives as well. again, this is an issue that affects everybody around the world. third, we will continue to brief members of congress and relevant state leadership on what we re doing and hot we learn. the predhas made this a very top priority. we have over the course of just the last few days and certainly over the course of last week reached out to inform and brief members of congress and relevant state governors of the operations we re conducting and the recovery operations under way. we have also kept congress briefed generally on the issue of chinese surveillance bal
i said that could be one reason why we re finding more. what we re getting at is why are we all of a sudden shooting them down? and to add to that, the norad commander, for instance, said that when the first spy balloon was crossing over american then canadian air space, one reason he couldn t take action is his assessment was it didn t pose a military threat or have a hostile intent so he couldn t take action there. it seems like maybe that protocol has changed or his ability to make that call where there is not an imminent threat militarily or physically might have changed. so can you explain to us what changed, why are we shooting them down all of a sudden? i kind of feel like i took care of that in my opening statement, but i m happy to revisit it. really, two reasons here. and these are certainly well, in both cases they re different. we need to separate the chinese spy balloon.