Blinken Backs Biden Calling Xi A 'Dictator': Beijing Trip Was A Bust
So much for Blinken's recent trip and June 19 meeting with Xi Jinping toward 'mending' ties: After Biden admin officials at first scrambled to walk back or at least soften Biden's "dictator" remarks on Xi, there now appears another reversal, suggesting tensions are as bad as they were (or worse) before Blinken's Beijing trip...
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday backed President Biden’s remarks calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator, saying the president "speaks for all of us."
"It’s very clear that when it comes to China, we are going to do and say things that they don’t like. They are going to do and say things that we don’t like," Blinken said on CNN’s "State of the Union" when asked whether the president was wrong to refer to Xi as a dictator in comments about the Chinese spy balloon that crossed the U.S. before being shot down in February.
Last Thursday not only had Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried to downplay the dictator remarks from the president, but Biden himself attempted to smooth things over.
Biden had addressed his prior Tuesday night dictator comments, given before a campaign event in California, which has since infuriated Beijing. He did this during press conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi:
President Biden said Thursday he didn’t believe his description this week of Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a dictator had set back U.S. relations with China, after Beijing summoned the U.S. ambassador for an official reprimand following the president’s comments.
"I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future, the near term, and I don’t think it’s had any consequence," Biden said...
Biden also had this to say when pressed by reporters...
“The idea of my choosing and avoiding saying what I think is the facts, with regard to the relationship… with China, is just not something I’m going to change very much,” he said in response to a reporters question..
The president said he expects to meet with Xi “sometime in the future, in the near term,” and that the diplomatic fallout has not “had any real consequence,” referring to it as “hysteria.”
And yet now, according to Blinken on Sunday, that Xi is a "dictator" appears to be the official White House line, and they are sticking with it.
Here's the exchange between Blinken and CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday:
"There’s no secret about concerns we have about democracy, about human rights, about some of the actions that China is taking around the world, and being able to have better stronger sustained lines of communication means we can talk about these differences directly," Blinken said.
"Do you believe that Xi Jinping is a dictator?" host Dana Bash pressed.
"The president speaks clearly. He speaks candidly. I’ve worked for him for more than 20 years, and he speaks for all of us," Blinken answered.
Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC explains why Biden blurted out to donors that President Xi is a "dictator," immediately blowing up the alleged rapprochement from Blinken's visit to China: "It's the West Coast, it's late at night, he's done four of these... he's had a very busy schedule" pic.twitter.com/zGrF9pKNs7
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 21, 2023
Days ago, the Chinese government summoned the US ambassador in Beijing to issue a formal rebuke. Beijing has denounced Biden's words as "extremely absurd" given they "seriously violated China’s political dignity" and amounted to "political provocation". Again, all of this underscores that US-China relations are right back to square one, when things took a further downturn in the wake of the February Chinese spy balloon shootdown incident.
