We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Emily Gisinski, Culture Editor here at the Federalist.

As always, you can email the show at radioatthefederalist.com, follow us on Twitter at FDRLST.

Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well.

Today, it could not possibly be more excited to be joined by Rebecca Heinrich,

she's a senior professor at Hudson Institute, and she's also the recipient of a very kind birthday gift

from the Chinese Communist Party in the form of a balloon.

A birthday-themed gift.

Rebecca, happy birthday. Welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much. We're just chatting. It's my birthday and the gift verse birthday today.

It's very exciting. That's right. And on this occasion, you get the chance to, as we were talking

before the podcast aired, just rip on the CCP for their meddling in our country.

And on that note, Rebecca, I'm just going to start with a very simple question.

What the heck is going on?

So here's the thing. The balloon.

It's obviously really bad. We don't know exactly what was on the package,

kind of what they were using to spy on us.

But they sent this big massive, I think they needed reported it,

it was the size of three buses. So you can see it with the naked eye.

We didn't even hear about it. The American people didn't even know about it.

From the Pentagon on the White House at first, we heard about it because local news

broke it because you could just see it hovering over the country.

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