BREAKING: Blinken Scraps China Trip Over Spy Balloon

Breaking news today on Sekulow as Secretary Blinken scraps his China trip over the spy balloon that the Chinese are flying over the United States right now. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls.

1-800-684-3110. To quote the administration, an intelligence gathering balloon launched by the People's Republic of China is currently floating above the United States. The balloon has now been spotted over Montana, which is home to one of the nation's three nuclear missile silos at Maelstrom Air Force Base. So you've got Senator Daines of Montana very upset about this.

We'll talk about that, too. Right now, the U.S. position from the Biden administration is to allow the balloon to continue to float above the United States rather than shoot it down. That's the decision from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, and Air Force General Glenn Van Herk, commander of the U.S. Northern Command. Now, we've heard from members of Congress, of course, because they could have shot this down over water as it was entering the Pacific Northwest in areas of the Pacific Northwest that would be able to handle a debris field. Because this is not a hot air balloon, as Marco Rubio said. This balloon, which, by the way, can be controlled, so it's like a drone balloon, is carrying two surveillance devices. Each one is the size of a city bus.

Okay, so I want you just to understand that. That's like two city buses connected to a huge balloon that the Chinese are controlling like a drone. So there were some initial reports that they were not controlling. The Chinese said it was a weather balloon that got off course because it was controlled by wind flow and air stream.

Not true, obviously. Our Defense Department has said that is, in fact, a surveillance device, which means it's a spy balloon. What's interesting about it is, and you said this, is Senator Daines has said that the balloon is occupying Montana's airspace, so they are staying in Montana. And they're staying in the Montana area because they are hovering over our intercontinental ballistic fields that are the targets, obviously, of their information gathering, and that is the mount from Air Force Base in Montana. Interesting also, the administration scrambled F-22s to take the balloon down, and it could have been taken down before it entered land space over our waterway rights, and they didn't do it. So we have a spy balloon at 50,000 feet, which is the same as your airlines are flying, right now hovering over Montana. And we're allowing this from the Chinese Communist Party.

Now let's put it in reverse. If the United States were to fly a balloon over Beijing at 50,000 feet, do you think the Chinese would let it stay there? But the Chinese have said to us, don't do anything rash. Calm down. Of course, calm down. You don't have to tell this administration to calm down. They're so calm, it's frightening.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, so the situation here, I think, you hear from these U.S. senators, as I said, Marco Rubio said this is not some hot air balloon. It's a large payload of sensors, roughly the size of two city buses, and the ability to mover independently. Senator Marshall Blackburn, the CCP spy balloon is as much about weather as the Confucius Institutes are about education. It's called spying. Why won't they shoot down the Chinese spy balloon that's currently flying over the United States? Tom Cotton said, hey, if you don't want to shoot it down, how about we bring the balloon down and exploit the technology, which is what the Chinese love to do with our aircraft. And anything that goes down in the Pacific, there's like a race to the aircraft. So bring it down and let's see what they have in those two city bus size surveillance. That's what people need to understand. The surveillance gear alone is the size of two city buses. And they're hovering over our Air Force base that controls intercontinental ballistic missiles.

I want you to think about this. What is the Biden administration doing? Canceling, blinking strip to China. That's what they're doing.

Yeah, that's their big reaction, not to shoot it down. I think there is a briefing going on. We can follow that.

We come back from the break. 1-800-684-3121 to hear from you. Should this be shot down? Or do you like the Tom Cotton method if possible?

I would love that method if we could bring it down and exploit their technology and see exactly so we can show people. Give us a call at 1-800-684-3110 or go to ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

A lot of calls coming in. Screening them now and then we'll get right to them. But this idea here is we just heard the briefing, well this doesn't pose a military threat. But that's because this is not a drone balloon in the sense that it's got missiles to fire at us. That's different from posing a national security threat. Correct.

Evidently, and Colonel Smith is here and Rick Rinnell. Colonel Smith, as far as the weaponization of this, it doesn't appear to be a weapon, but it does appear to be a spy satellite. Well not only that, it is a violation of U.S. sovereign airspace.

I mean it just simply is. This balloon is about 5 miles up, 50,000 miles. Our air identification zone as far as going up is 50 miles.

And it depends on which country you talk about. China in particular recognizes all the way up to 62 miles the Kármán line. What's so interesting here, Rick, is that they're flying it the same, this balloon, that the Chinese Communist Party said, oh no, don't worry about it, it's a weather balloon.

And our military has not said that, our military has said the other. Because we're not doing anything about it and it's hovering over Montana or South Dakota and in that area. I mean it's kind of, if you look at it, it's kind of looped around. They're obviously controlling it. Because there were some statements earlier that they weren't controlling it, Rick. But when Will Haynes, our executive producer, pulled up the way it's come in and you see it over Montana there, I mean it's pretty much Montana, it could get to these areas and it's hovering there.

Well let me talk to Rick. What are we dealing with here? Well first of all, it's a threat. There's no question that it is a threat. And this is not the first thing.

What intelligence officials and defense officials know, they cannot be saying, is that this is something that has to be fairly right. You're going to have to get Rick's internet fixes. It's not working. Go ahead, Jordan. Do we have the photo pulls of the balloon? I mean, that's how big it is, okay? I mean, this is very far away, this photo. We could take this down, correct?

Remember, what you're seeing at the bottom are the sizes of city buses. So the balloon is like, it's huge. Yeah, there you go. So we had the capability of knocking this down and we could have taken it out over the water.

Oh, absolutely. That's what I don't understand. Whenever they discovered it was over Montana, and Maelstrom Air Force Base, and this is not classified information, is a home of one of three ICBM fields. They have 150 missile silos underground at Maelstrom, but it came across through the Northern Pacific and the Aleutian Islands. NORAD had to see it coming. They guard the airspace. It should have been shot down when it got within the three-mile nautical border of our country, over the water because it was violating U.S. sovereign airspace. But it did not happen, but it should have been shot down. You know what's interesting?

Jordan, you were going to remember this. When we lived in Norfolk and you had a boat, I had a boat, and we would meet out, remember when you'd go three miles out? You'd all of a sudden get a signal from Coast Guard saying, just to let you know, you're entering international waterways, so be on the lookout for... I mean, they would say, be on the lookout for ships, be on the lookout for submarines, and let us know if you hear anything.

Sea submarines, the water, how they would push is they would come out of port and then they would have boats that would circle them so you wouldn't cross them because they were underwater but just barely and still making waves. We've got Rick on the phone. So, Rick, what kind of threat are we looking at here? Well, first of all, it is a very serious threat and it is not the first time whether defense or intelligence officials are going to admit it.

This happens fairly regularly. The Chinese are very aggressive about data collection and so the threat of having them take pictures, listen to what's happening, collect information is a very serious threat. When the United States had a drone that went off course and the Chinese recovered it, they spent about six months taking it apart before they sent it back to us. They collected information on us.

They found very serious methods that we were using to collect information. We must shoot that balloon down and all other balloons that come into our airspace to be able to evaluate it, take it apart, and understand what the Chinese are using to listen to us. Remember, we had to shut down a Chinese consulate. I advocated for getting more aggressive about shutting down more Chinese consulates because of their strategy of how they collect, how aggressive they are with our politicians, with our young politicians.

Eric Swalwell, for instance, was somebody who was caught into this mess. We need to get much more aggressive with their tactics. Wes, from a tactical standpoint, if you wanted, like Senator Cotton said, why don't we figure out how to get this balloon down so that we can find out what's going on. I'm sure we have that capability, I would think.

I would think so too. I don't know for sure. There ought to be a way to gradually deflate it so that it loses altitude and we can also capture the balloon.

I'm not sure about that. I do know that just to give you a comparison, low earth orbit satellites are somewhere between 70 and 100 miles up. The spaceship station is 240 miles up. Our airspace is 50 miles.

This balloon is at five miles above the United States. Lying at the same level as commercial airlines. All right, we're taking calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Holly's calling from Montana. Holly, welcome to the broadcaster on the air.

Hi, thank you for taking my call. I guess my biggest concern living in Montana is that if it is shot down, could it be a bioweapons kind of thing where they're anticipating we would shoot it down and release something? Listen, Rick, I was thinking the same thing. You're the director of national intelligence, so I don't want you to tell us anything you're not supposed to, but would we have the capacity to know if it was containing a biodevice or biological matters that could be contaminating the populace if it were to be taken down? Well, I want to be very careful in how I say this and not specifically respond to any question about a bioweapon, but let me say this. We, the United States of America, absolutely have the ability to go and capture that balloon. And we are absolutely able to figure out what's inside and bring it down peacefully, collect it, keep it so that it's not a threat to anyone on the ground. It's ridiculous to think that the United States of America can't get that balloon down peacefully. Yeah, I mean, to me, again, I think that this is just shocking to hear these briefings from top military that we're just going to let this go.

They said they don't want to engage. It appears we're monitoring this. Will, have they said what they're going to do other than monitor it?

No, not yet. Nothing. So, Rick, right now the approach is, you know, watchful waiting, I guess is what it is. I mean, it's not a physical threat at this time, but I think, Rick, that's the distinction, physical threat versus national security threat. And so they're using very specific language. Like, of course, we know it doesn't have missiles on it.

It doesn't, it's not that kind of drone or balloon, but it can still pose a great national security threat without being a violent military threat. Look, I don't think we can talk about this without recognizing the fact that the Biden administration is incredibly weak. They don't put America first. They put consensus with the world first.

I've already heard progressives and the left who have captured the Biden administration say, we are currently negotiating a climate change agreement with China. So let's be careful on how we confront them. Let's be careful in pissing them off. And this is the, this is the mentality. When you put consensus first, when you put agreement first, then the Chinese get to move the ball, move the balloon, so to speak, into our territory. And we're left to react in a, in a way that we don't ramp up the conversation.

And this means that they are ruling our diplomacy and they're getting the better end of the deal. I'm going to take Tim's call from California. Tim, go ahead. You're on the air.

Thank you for taking my call. Number one, what right does any country have to spy on us and try to get information? Number two, why can't we just take the balloon down and exploit the technology? Let me answer your first question. Let me answer your first question, Tim. Let's not be naive.

Okay. We do surveillance on other countries. They do surveillance on us.

The, the, the audaciousness of this one, Rick, is that they're doing it at 50,000 feet. Well, look, of course, countries, uh, collect information on each other that, that it's ridiculous to think that countries don't do that. But, uh, you, when you, when you take a balloon into sovereign airspace, then you have to deal with the consequences of that, uh, country you're spying on gets to bring down the balloon and figure out what you're using. This is part of the game. They made a mistake by entering our airspace. We should be reacting. This is pretty easy.

We should be, we should be getting it down and figuring out what's inside. I appreciate it. Rick Grinnell, our Senior Advisor on National Security and Intelligence, and this is one of those moments that we're thrilled that Rick's part of the team because of your support of the ACLJ that happens.

That's right. Go to ACLJ.org. Support our work today.

If you can, make a donation online. ACLJ.org. It's how we have Rick Grinnell. It's how we have Mike Pompeo. It's how we represent clients at no cost to them.

It's how we bring you the broadcast. ACLJ.org. Again, we've got exclusive content from people like Rick Grinnell, from Mike Pompeo, from folks on our team at the ACLJ on all of the work that we're doing. If you can make that donation today, do it at ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Take your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. All right. Right to the phones we go.

1-800-684-3110. Let's recap for everybody. Share your thoughts. There's a Chinese spy balloon going over the United States, and right now it's over one of three sites for nuclear missile silos, which this one is in Montana. So Senator Steve Daines is very upset, as you can imagine.

He represents the state of Montana, the U.S. Senate, and the military has no plans to take it down. This is, again, when we use balloon, I think you think hot air balloon, even from the pictures that are far away, it can kind of look like that. This thing is giant. It is being controlled. So someone in China is actually deciding where this goes. So it's not just they threw up a balloon at the end.

It's not some 1950s-style, World War II-style move. It is carrying surveillance equipment the size of two city buses. So imagine two city buses and then how big the balloon is, because when you see the balloon, you see the equipment.

The equipment looks small. That's two city buses' worth of equipment. So this is, again, the Biden administration failing the American people, and our military leadership.

Where are they? I mean, this is, again, it's like they are so much about placating China. I know. But this is like, do you think the Chinese would have any problem taking down our balloon? Not in 10 seconds they would do it. Let's take Ron's call from North Carolina online, too. I don't think we'd ever make it to mainland China.

We've had a little phone glitch here. I don't think it would make it to mainland China. We have the capability of taking it down, and we have probably, and based on what Rick said, without giving out info, we have the ability to take it down without dismantling it. To confiscate it. But back to what Jordan was saying, it's very interesting, because I looked up a statement. This whole idea of the Air Defense Identification Zone is an international debate. It's been going on for years.

What does that mean? Countries get to decide, you know, who has overflight rights, how they have to identify themselves, and how high they can be above their own sovereign territory without having to do that. The thing about China in these debates, there have been international debates, and I pulled a quote from a Chinese representative called Shen Zhengke who's been debating this for China, and it's about airspace and about overflight rights. And here's what he says, the Chinese armed forces are capable of effective control over our zone and will take measures to deal with air threats to protect the security of the country's airspace. He continues, its aims are to protect China's state sovereignty and airspace safety. This is his question about 62 miles above China unless you have overflight rights and identify yourself.

We are not doing that with them. Now let's go to Warren who's calling from Idaho on Line 1. Warren, welcome to the broadcast around the air.

Gentlemen, thanks for taking my call. My question would be, like Colonel Smith might be able to answer, is this balloon capable of carrying like an EMP-type weapon? Well, I mean, let me, before Colonel Smith engages, Rick Grenell was telling you that, if you were listening in the last segment, if you got a chance to catch the last segment, we probably know what's on this balloon.

I mean, our military and our intelligence probably knows what's on this balloon. Could it be carrying electronic electromagnetic pulse? Could it? Could be. And that would probably... It's not likely though, right? But that would be an act of provocation under an international... Would that be an act of war?

Oh, absolutely. This already is considered under international law an act of aggression. You're violating a sovereign space over a country. But here's the thing, what if it were?

What if it were carrying a weapon or an EMP device? We've already let it fly from Alaska all the way to Montana without taking any steps to bring it down. We should have shot it down when it was over the North Pacific and the Aleutian Islands where there aren't very many people. We did not. We had to know it was there. I'm mystified by the response, the weak response of the Biden administration and the Pentagon.

Let me play it for you, number 28. In regards to our announcement last night regarding the high altitude surveillance balloon, I'm not going to have much new information to provide other than to say that the North American Aerospace Defense Command continues to monitor it closely. While we won't get into specifics in regards to the exact location, I can tell you that the balloon continues to move eastward and is currently over the center of the continental United States. Again, we currently assess that the balloon does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground at this time. Okay, first of all, these guys are not confidence builders.

Can I say that? With due respect to the military, I am being respectful of the military, but these are not confidence builders. This high altitude surveillance balloon, high altitude, it's 50,000 feet. Okay, that's not exactly high altitude.

That's the same as your Delta flight. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I have no new information to provide, you know, provide some new information.

Okay, we'd like to know, like, really, what is this? Number two or three, he says, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is that the, Wes, what is that? That's NORAD, based in Colorado. They monitor all of the airspace, not only over America, but anything approaching America. It doesn't present a military or physical threat to the people on the ground at this time. Yeah, that's encouraging. That's comforting. And here again, if NORAD has been monitoring this, which I believe he is correct in that, why are we just now finding out about it when it's over Montana?

If they've been monitoring it and they know that it's violating airspace, that it's not our device, why did they do what any normal country would do and that it's take it down when it entered our sovereign territory? Alright, let's go back to the phones. 1-800-684-3110, Raymond in California, online too. Hey, Raymond. Hey, thanks for taking my call. So I guess it's safe to say, as it hovers around, it's not releasing any kind of chemicals then, correct?

Wes? Who knows? Well, wouldn't they know if there was something coming out of it that was impacting the atmosphere? If they have, I guess, an aircraft close enough to actually monitor that, you can't do that from the ground.

I mean, you can't really see chemicals or biological warfare coming out of the device. I think that's highly, highly unlikely. China, that would be an act of war. And I don't think they're going to do that. What bothers me is that they are testing the Biden administration. They are pushing the limits. They're seeing what they can get away with. They are doing an overflight, gathering intelligence over a very sensitive nuclear site. And the response of the United States has been to do nothing.

And that was exactly the response I think the Chinese were expecting. No, I think that's right. Adam's calling from California on Line 4. Adam, go ahead.

You're on the air. Hello. I just wanted to agree with what he just said. And I see the pattern through our technology, through our, you know, their TikTok and everything that they've done through the internet. I mean, this balloon is just another thing that's obviously showing that they don't care about our boundaries.

Correct. Certainly they've interfered with our boundaries. Now, we're going to be joined by Mike Pompeo coming up. And they'll give us some additional insight as to the former Secretary of State who's dealt with President Chairman Xi.

So he knows him well and has met with him multiple times. So we'll get his insight on this. But let me tell you what it does show.

The Chinese have made a very aggressive move here. And our response, now, it's a tepid response. Now, maybe there's a reason for the tepid response.

It could be things we don't know. I want to be fair on that. But it does seem to be a very tepid response. And members of Congress are saying, why are we letting this go? I mean, it is what Marsha Blackburn said.

You mentioned this earlier, Jordan. She said, the CCC spy balloon is as much about weather as the Confucius Institutes are about education. It's called spying. And then you've got Marco Rubio saying, this is not some hot air balloon. It's a large payload of sensors roughly the size of two city buses and ability to maneuver independently. This is a serious move. They've taken a very serious reaction, the Chinese. Yes.

Yes. And I think that our military, they're trying to look serious about it, but then their actions about it are not serious at all. They're trying to play it down. And again, what's the deal here? On the one hand, they're telling us, you know, we've got to be... Yeah, John Kerry wants to climb into China.

Because they're going to really stop producing what they need to keep making money around the world. Well, we're going to be joined by Mike Pompeo coming up, and he's going to be able to tell us a lot of what's going on here. And that's because of your support of the ACLJ. We're able to give you this analysis on this broadcast. But also, we're able to give you real insight. And if you enjoy this broadcast, if you find it informative, support the work of the ACLJ. You help keep it on the air.

Go to ACLJ.org. We're here for another 30 minutes. If you're not getting in on your radio station, go to Sirius XM or any of your social media platforms. We'll be back with more in a moment. Keeping you informed and engaged.

Now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Hey, welcome back to Sekulow. We're going to take your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. We're going to talk about this more with Mike Pompeo in just the next segment, just about five minutes of the broadcast. We do want to update you in this shorter segment on another situation the ACLJ is involved in. It's about to be active litigation.

And that is if you caught Sean Hannity's radio broadcasts or TV broadcasts or saw the Fox News story or our blog. And we did mention it last week on radio as well, though we're learning more and more, is the students who were harassed and then chased out of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. This is the Air and Space Museum that just reopened in Washington, D.C., not the annex that's out in Northern Virginia by Dulles. And so after the March for Life, about 12 of those students that you saw in that picture decided we'd like to go to that museum. Some went to other museums.

We represent right now seven students and parents. And it was a group of about 12 that were adding more as we speak. And the harassment started from the beginning, though they didn't really realize it. It started when they went through security where they said, take off your beanies. And then they told one of the students, don't put it back on. Then they started walking through the museum and saw people with hats on.

So they realized it's not a policy not to wear a hat. And then they get a second encounter with security. Two security guards come up to them, harass them, curse under their breath at them with the most vulgar curse words you can use. So some of these students are biters, by the way, and say they need to get out of there, take those off.

You beep beep pro-lifers. And then they're on their way out, literally. They're finally leaving to get on the bus. And then another security guard comes up. Take a listen. This is Patrick Murphy, the student I was on last night with Sean Hannity, telling even the story of how it kept happening. This was the third incident with the fifth different security official.

Take a listen. A large man, as we were walking out, because we had to catch our bus, and he comes up to us rubbing his hands together saying, y'all are about to make my day. And he tells us he's got reports saying we said no to taking our hats off and we're in trouble for some odd reason. And one of the students repeats the talking point saying it's used for identification, and he wasn't having it. I then said, this is a violation of our First Amendment right. This is a government-funded building. He said it's a neutral zone, and that doesn't apply here.

First of all, the word neutral zone did not come from some security guard out of nowhere. Let me tell you what we've instructed our staff to do. File a federal lawsuit. Depose every one of these security officials.

Depose the people that run the Air and Space Museum. Find out who did this, and they will never do it again. Because I guarantee you there were other people that were wearing, you know, had printing on their shirts or their sweaters or had identification. By the way, all the beanie said was pro-life. That was it.

Name the school and pro-life. And by the way, it's not just Smithsonian we now know. No, there's others as well coming. We thought this.

I said it on Hannity's broadcast last night. One of the reasons these students wanted to speak out on this was because they believe it could have happened to other people that day. And we now know it did. I'm not going to disclose more than that because we're talking to those potential clients at a different museum and harassment there over a t-shirt.

So I could go that far right now. But what is, again, unique here and something we're looking at as well in the legal filing is to obviously know about what training that did happen after. We want to know that. But what training happened before in preparation for the day they knew there was the March for Life? Also, who was responsible for that training?

Because it seems like it was more than just air and space. So it wasn't just their division. And then they say they have retrained. We want to know that policy and offer to rewrite it. You're not kidding.

To rewrite their training for them. That's why you've got to go to federal court, which we're going to be doing early next week. All right, more on this.

We'll keep you posted. These security guards were cursing us. Yes, I want to dispose every one of them. Let me say this also. This is where you come in. Your support of the ACLJ keeps this broadcast on the air and gets our lawyers to go to court in Washington, D.C. It looks like two federal court filings for these students. We're standing up for this.

Your standing with us makes all the difference. Go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. Coming up, our Senior Counsel of Global Affairs Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, joining us next. Welcome back to the second. We've got a lot of phone calls, folks.

Just hang on. We want to go right to a former Secretary of State, former CIA Director for a member of Congress, Mike Pompeo. Secretary Pompeo is our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs of the ACLJ. We know that the news broke last night as we've been discussing from the Pentagon that they are tracking a Chinese spy balloon right now over Montana, which is where one of three of our ICM bases, our nuclear missile bases are, silos are. What's your initial reaction to the news that the Chinese did this and that the U.S. right now and the military's response is, we're just going to let it go?

Well, Jordan, that seems to me like a big mistake given what we've been told so far about what's really taking place there. The military is saying publicly that, boy, there's not a lot of information they can glean from this that they couldn't from a satellite. Maybe that's true.

Maybe it's not. We should find out what it is they are collecting, what the Chinese Communist Party is doing in forms of collection. But even beyond that, this is a political statement. We've allowed now a Chinese aircraft to violate our own sovereign space. We have the ability to make sure that that doesn't happen, and we should do that. I've heard talks shoot it down. It should be brought down.

We should find out what gear it has. We should tell the Chinese this is unacceptable, very much Jordan, like we did with the Chinese spying from our console in Houston, Texas on Thursday. We just said nuts. We're not going to let this happen. We're going to stop this. The fact that the administration is passively responding to another Chinese provocation has deep political implications for us going forward. I was finished up reading your book, which is a great book, folks. You should get it, Never Give an Inch, Fighting for the America I Love. It's by Mike Pompeo.

Great book. You have a lot on China. Senator Blackburn said, and it's an interesting statement she made, she tweeted out today, she said, you know, this so-called weather balloon, she calls it the CCP spy balloon is as much about weather as the Confucian Institutes are about education. But this was a very bold move of the Chinese to do this. They're flying at 50,000 feet.

This is the same as your Delta flight. They're just saying it's a weather balloon, which nobody believes. But that's a bold move for them to do this. Yes, they're testing, Jay. You got it exactly right.

And Senator Blackburn had it right too. No, they're testing us. They're seeing what the response will be. Next time it'll be something bigger.

Sometimes it'll be something with even more equipment. They are pushing. They have found that Vladimir Putin was able to push Joe Biden around. They saw what happened in Afghanistan. This is another instance where the model of not giving an inch, the deterrence model that we had for four years is so vital.

And maybe this particular balloon doesn't have anything super special. Fair enough. Send a message to the Chinese Communist Party. You are not going to violate our airspace. You are not going to fly willy-nilly over Montana. You're not going to buy our land, American land near our military bases. We're not going to permit you to continue to engage in economic warfare on the United States. This is essential for the protection of the American people.

My buddy is the state-honored West Virginia Overseas Lands. They just put forward legislation to ban the Chinese from doing that in West Virginia to buy a farmland. We now know, Secretary Pompeo, that your successor, Secretary Blinken, he was scheduled to go to China and meet with Chairman Xi. He's postponed that.

I know that, again, the consequences of this action is what the administration is saying. Is that the right move? Or should he go there and say, by the way, deliver a message like, while I'm here, we're taking that balloon down and taking all of your intelligence from it?

You know, I think that's probably the right answer. I think you should postpone the meeting, cancel the meeting for now. By the way, there were many other good reasons not to go there and just have a gab fest, and this is the problem. It's not so much that he was prepared to engage. I don't know what substantive there would have been coming from the meeting, because we aren't prepared to do the actual things. We just want to talk and not act. Not only did they face the virus on the United States of America, we know they were conducting espionage from the consulate. We can see every day, you talk about Confucius Institutes, they're in our universities. What the Chinese respect isn't that you hold a meeting or you cancel a meeting.

For them, that's just buying time for them to continue to engage in their hegemonic intention and their nasty wolf warrior behavior against our people. I want to take Dan's call from Washington State online, too. Dan, welcome to the broadcast. You're on the air talking to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Go ahead, Dan.

Well, thank you, Jay and company. I'm a long-time supporter and retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and Command Pilot. I served in Vietnam Desert Storm. I'm a retired airline pilot. At first, airlines typically don't fly above 41,000 feet, but this is in the PCA, the Positive Control Aerospace, that goes up to 50,000 feet. It is a hazard. It's a clear violation of our airspace. In my Air Force career, I was part of recovery of both U.S. and foreign spy satellites.

We definitely do have the capability to safely recover this spy airship, now engaged in active surveillance and espionage. Finally, Secretary Pompeo is absolutely right. One major issue here is that this is called a proven test to determine our reaction in response to such incursions, and the Russians have done this for years over our entire eight years. So they are a defense identification zone, so we must respond. A weak protest to a provocative act is not going to cut it. So, Secretary Pompeo, if you were calling the shots on this, how would you respond?

The Colonel had it right. We cannot engage passively. We must be proactive. We should certainly demurge them.

We should bring this down. Whatever tools we need, I'm confident we could execute that. We should then display it for all the world to see. Once we've done the things we need to do in collection, we should make clear to the world what the Chinese Communist Party did to us and what they're likely doing in other places across the world, and begin to impose enormous costs on the Chinese Communist Party for their continued dangerous behavior.

We see them. We confront them in the aircraft in the Taiwan Strait. We confront the aircraft in the Pacific. We have to make sure that they understand America is serious, and there's no statement, no demurge that alone is going to pull that off. You just brought up the Taiwan Strait, and we know that the Philippines has now granted the U.S. military expanded access to bases because of tensions in Taiwan increase. We saw a memo from a four-star general in the Air Force predicting war with China by 2025.

Are the tensions, I mean the American people would want to know this, reaching that kind of tipping point? Xi Jinping has demonstrated his intent. We know his desire.

He's stolen millions of jobs in the United States of America. Jay, you and I talked about this. Billions of dollars in intellectual property. We've turned the other cheek, and that risk only accelerates if you're weak. An engagement philosophy that says, boy, there's places we can cooperate. We can't. We all just get along. We'll continue to empower Xi Jinping and those around him to reduce American space for our freedom.

We can see this. These tensions are rising, not because of anything the United States is doing. They're because of the actions of the Chinese Communist Party.

And if we do not confront them, and the way Reagan confronted the Soviet Union, these problems will only grow more difficult as time goes on. Yeah, I want a final question for you today, and it's more of a domestic issue, and that is we are representing a group of students from a Catholic school in South Carolina who were kicked out of the Air and Space Museum for wearing a pro-life beanie. The beanies were used to identify the students. We have a picture up on the screen right now with their chaperones there, and it simply said pro-life, and then the word rosary. We now have learned that at the National Archives, in their public display areas, which is what the Constitution is and the other documents, that students were also told the same thing there. I think it had to do with a T-shirt that had a pro-life message on it.

They were told to leave the facility. I jokingly said the National Archives can't find classified documents, but they sure can search out pro-life students to get them removed. But this kind of attack on free speech is also serious. It's not the Chinese threatening military action, but it's demeaning to our students that when they're told, your message is pro-life, remove it.

Well, first of all, God bless these students for standing faithful in the things that they and their families believe in. God bless the ACLJ. You guys are going to take this on.

You will prevail. You're right. You understand the Constitution. These freedoms these kids have extend to the National Archives and to every place they want to do this. And to all the folks who are helping the ACLJ be successful, who contribute, bless you too. These fights are worthy. They're very, very important.

And while it might seem small to some that a kid couldn't wear a T-shirt at a particular place, I assure you the secular left is attacking this central freedom, our capacity to practice our faith the way we want to everywhere. And the ACLJ stands on the parapet defending these rights. I'm confident you'll do a great job, Jay and Jordan. This is really important stuff for the United States. Secretary Pompeo, as always, thank you for joining us. Your new book is out, Never Give an Inch. It's a great book, folks. You will learn a lot from this book about threats we have faced and do face.

And again, former CIA Director, former Secretary of State, member of Congress, West Point grad, served our military. Mike Pompeo, our ACLJ, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, thanks for joining us today. Yeah, great book, by the way. Jordan's right.

Never Give an Inch. Get it from bookstores everywhere. Encourage you to read it. Excellent book. Great insight today, folks. New York Times bestseller.

Yes, it is. New York Times bestseller. We're taking your calls. We've opened up two lines.

I mean, lines are jammed, but we got two open. 1-800-684-3110. Colonel Smith's going to join us. Professor Hutchinson's going to join us. Talk about this whole China thing again.

1-800-684-3110. But as Mike Pompeo just said, your support of the ACLJ allows us to have people like, look who you have today, the former Director of National Intelligence, Rince Grigonell, our Senior Advisor for National Security, and the former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA, who is also our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs. Mike Pompeo, that happens because of your support of the ACLJ.

It allows us to get this broadcast to you each and every day on all these different platforms. It also does this, allows us to go represent those students in federal court in Washington, D.C. That's where you come in. Your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. Let me encourage you to do that. ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. You can make an online contribution. Also, let me encourage you to follow us on Facebook at Jordan Sekulow, at Jay Sekulow, at Logan Sekulow, at ACLJ, Facebook, True Social, Rumble, YouTube, all of the different venues you can follow this broadcast.

We encourage you to do it. We're going to be back with your calls in just a moment. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Let's go right to Mike, also in Montana, where the Chinese spy balloon is hovering over right now. Hey, Mike, welcome to Sekulow. You're on the air.

Gentlemen, thank you for taking my call. My question is, why is it that our government, from top to bottom, federal and state, is not completely up in arms about this situation? For us citizens, it's terrible that we can think that nobody's there really to protect us from what's going on out there. I mean, they're hovering over your state right now, and they're hovering over there because we have intercontinental ballistic missile sites in your state.

We put it up on the screen. Over Montana right now is where the location of the Chinese spy balloon is. But you asked a really important question, Mike. Why is the entire government not up in arms about this? And I asked Professor Hutchinson this during the break, and here's my question. Are we so dependent on China for trade and other things that we are having to respond in this more attempted response? I think you're precisely correct. So I think dependence on China breeds complacency with respect to Chinese aggression. And so China is smart enough to test the limits of our willingness to engage with them militarily because they realize they have so many Americans who are dependent on them. If you think about the lobbying business in Washington, D.C., you think about all of the ex-congressmen who basically are lobbying in favor of China. If you think about the pharmaceutical industry, if you think about all sorts of industries, including chips, we are so dependent on China. China is basically controlling, at least to some extent, our foreign policy and our defense posture. Which begs the next question, and that is because of all that, that then impacts, Wes, the military options.

Absolutely. We are so dependent upon China. One of the things we learned from the COVID pandemic was how dependent we are on them for things like medicines, medical supplies. Because even right now, there has been a fertilizer shortage in the United States because we buy the bulk of our fertilizer from China. So when you're that dependent on this communist nation, it limits how you're going to respond to Chinese aggression. Whether you're responding militarily or responding diplomatically, it limits what you're going to do quite practically.

Meanwhile, two things are happening here. The American people love low prices from China, and the corporations love a fat bottom line. And because of that, we are literally doing nothing to unentwine ourselves from China.

Well, extricating ourselves from that, Harry, is not going to be easy. It's not, and it requires a long-term plan, a long-term vision. And I think former President Trump was very good at thinking, to some extent, from out of the box with respect to China. And recognizing that China was indeed a long-term threat. But there is not a bipartisan consensus on confronting China.

There's not a bipartisan consensus on reducing our dependence on China for medicine and for other important products. And so until we get to that particular posture as a nation, I think China will continue to be very, very aggressive. And I'm not a military analyst, but I would suggest at some point, China will begin to make some additional moves on Taiwan.

That's what I was just thinking. This is a message to China about our response to aggression. It's also a very frightening message to Taiwan. It sure is. I want to play this byte. This is Brigadier General Pat Ryder responding to a reporter's question just a few minutes ago on how close the U.S. was to shooting this down.

Take a listen by 31. How close was the U.S. to ordering, was the President to ordering a shoot down of the balloon? Yeah, so again, I'm not going to get into discussions, internal discussions within the White House. Again, right now we assess that there is no threat, a physical threat or military threat to people on the ground. So we're continuing to monitor. We'll just leave it at that. Which tells you that they weren't going to take it down.

They scrambled aircraft, which was the right thing to do, but they weren't going to take it down. Let's go ahead and take another call. Yeah, we'll go to Sue at Nebraska Online 5. Hey, Sue.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I was just wondering, you guys are so effective at the petitions. I was wondering if you could do some kind of a petition to let members of Congress know that the American people are more concerned than maybe the administration is and some members of Congress are.

To let them know that they represent us and doggone it, it's time that they start representing us in this. And when they say there's no physical threat, well, if you have a war, that's going to be a physical threat. And look, intelligence gathering is a threat.

It's just not a physical threat, but it's a threat to your national sovereignty. And, Sue, you raise an interesting point and we'll talk to ACLJ Action about this because I wonder if it's true that what Sue was saying, that the temperature is not being felt on Congress right now because there's so many other things going on. Although this, when you looked at the news today, this was everywhere. Yeah, and I think we have more allies in Congress who take this seriously as we've gone through all these messages, tweets today, we've talked about it, than we do the Biden administration and even our military. The unique role is that Congress has that power of the purse. That's where they can really kind of push for action. But this is up to Joe Biden, ultimately. This is what falls under Presidential authority is how to command the military to take action here.

He has to make that final call. Yep. Let's take Lynn's call from Washington State online when you notice it's the Northwest that's calling because that's where it's starting, folks.

Lynn, go ahead. You're on the air. I was wondering why we don't shoot down or shoot off those two things hanging off the bottom of the balloon which look like arms that belong on a satellite to collect information and... And they're much bigger than that.

They're the size of buses. Well, now they put themselves in a position where they're saying it would be too large of a debris field because they didn't do this sooner. Yes. Because they didn't do this sooner. But as we've heard from Rick Grenell and Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pompeo said it very clearly, that we have the capabilities to take this down without destroying it so that we can then utilize, know what the technology was. That's what the Chinese would fear the most. Not just us blowing it up. No, they were just getting it and find out what they were doing.

They were getting their tech, hacking into their tech, and then if you can hack into that tech, you might be able to hack into all their surveillance. Well, I hear Mike say that. That is exactly what the United States military should be doing.

He said they're capable of it. Why is that not already happening? Because I'm here today, it's floating eastward.

Montana has a lot fewer people in it than Wisconsin or New York, and it's heading east. So take it down and confiscate it now. Maybe they're planning on doing it. Well, there could be an operation underway on that and they're just not going to say anything. And I get that because they may have the capability to destroy the technology themselves, the Chinese.

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. But the idea of taking it down, I think at first instance would be the right thing. I'm gathering the data and you heard it from two people that would know if we could do it. Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA and secretary of state and the former director of national intelligence on this broadcast said we had the capability of doing it. And I think we exercised that capability, would send a message to the Chinese government too that we are sophisticated in our response and we're going to find out what you're doing and then we're going to hold you accountable.

Yep. Again, we'll work on this at ACLJ and ACLJ Action. Support the work of the ACLJ. If you can, financially at ACLJ.org, you can make that donation today. It's how we have Mike Pompeo, Rick Rinnell, bring them to you on these most important of days for them to join that discussion. Our attorneys, it's how we represent those students at no cost to them, the pro-life students out of South Carolina kicked out of the Smithsonian.

And I imagine there's going to be more from different schools and different places that we're visiting in Washington that day. It's because of your financial support of the ACLJ. Donate today at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.