good evening. tomorrow, the man who many expected to give the former president s toughest primary challenge of 2024 makes it official. florida s governor, ron desantis, getting into the race, taking on his fellow floridian, launching the campaign in a streaming event with elon musk on twitter. his opponent s former favorite megaphone. which he used in 2016, of course, to pummel the rest of the republican field, including former florida senator, marco rubio, and floor jeb bush, who you turn first into a verbal punching bag, then a campaign punchline, and finally, a political footnote. in a moment randi kaye looks ahead to whether governor desantis will do any better against those kind of tactics. first, the kind of political waters he is about to jump into. in one way, they may appear promising for a republican candidate. the current president s job approval, now stands at 40%. a new cnn polling out late today. and with the debt ceiling crisis coming to a head, that same p
get a briefing on china while members of congress are holding hearings demanding answers about the u.s. response to that spy balloon that floated across the u.s. we ll talk to congressman gregory meeks who attended a house briefing on the matter earlier this morning. president biden is back on the road today heading to a key battleground state to sell his agenda, and he s doubling down on accusations that some republicans want to cut medicare and social security. and migrant crossing borders are up. they re up 700%, but not through the southern border. we ll explain. we begin with devastating earthquakes in turkey and syria where the staggering death toll is now more than 19,000 as workers are going through ruins in hopes of finding more survivors. i want to warn you that the following footage is disturbing, but it is the reality. the reality that people are facing today. right now dozens of unidentified bodies are laying out on the ground in a makeshift morgue in souther
balloon after it reveals it was capable of collecting evidence. the president s critics say it should have been shot down sooner. they had a chance to shoot it down over water and they did and recovered major pieces of it. have relations now between u.s. and china taken a big hit? no. no. owl speak to former defense secretary leon panetta whose criticism of the spy balloon and its response has caught the president s attention. and as the death toll rises to 19,000 people, and hope fades to find any more survivors, we ll talk to david milla land, the president of the international committee helping thousands displaced across turkey and syria. good day, everyone. i m andrea mitchell in washington. as the 2024 campaign is right around the corner it seems with president biden arriving in battleground florida at this hour to tout his support for social security and medicare. republican governors and senators have put the stake firmly in the gop column for more than
right now, two separate senate committees are drilling into u.s. and china relations. in the wake of that chinese spy balloon entering the u.s. just last hour senator jon tester made the stakes abundantly clear. china s a real threat and one we need to take seriously, which is exactly why we re here today. house members this morning receiving a classified briefing on the balloon ahead of a vote scheduled just a few minutes from now to condemn china s use of a spy craft. senators are set to receive an all members briefing of their own in about 30 minutes. all of this happening as the state department is revealing fresh details about china s surveillance program this morning. and just what the balloon hovering over the u.s. was capable of. in a few moments, i ll talk to former u.s. ambassador to china max baucus about what we can learn and the very real threat posed by china. plus, fading hopes for survival, days after devastating earthquakes rocked turkey and syria. the
jets to ukraine. we start with the devastating earthquakes which have rocked southern turkey and northern syria and are now known to have killed more than 11,700 people. turkey s president erdogan has been defending his government s response to the disaster on a visit to some of the worst affected areas. we ll have more on that shortly. but first, with the search operations ongoing in the rubble of collapsed buildings, dramatic pictures continue to emerge of rescues in both countries. cheering. this was the moment that rescuers hauled a boy onto a stretcher moments after he was rescued from the rubble two days after the earthquake. there were also cheers ofjubilation at being able to save his life. there have been other glimmers of hope in an otherwise grim landscape of devastation and death. our correspondent, anna foster, has been in the village of karamanmaras. i was watching them take bodies out of here last night and again this morning. it is pulling aside all of this