Tony Blinken
speaker
101 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Tony Blinken’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They knew that I was speaking with authority on behalf of the president because of that relationship. I think it's maybe more challenging now for the secretary to, again, make sure that he's seen as speaking clearly for the president. So he has to figure out what it is the president wants him to do and wants him to say. That's part of the challenge of the job.
You know, one of the things I've learned from doing this for 32 years and being in government for much of that time is, look, there are always going to be compromises you're asked to make, and everyone has to decide for themselves. And it's different for every individual. What is a compromise on my beliefs, my principles, my values that I can't make?
What is something that tells me that the ends don't justify the means? That's a different decision for everyone. And look, what we don't know is it's possible that the secretary is managing to do and protect some things by being seen somewhat differently. Yeah.
There would seem to be something of a contradiction between some of the things that he did and stood for when he was in the United States Senate and what he seems to be doing and standing for for now. And that's obviously a good question to ask him.
Well, I seem to remember during the campaign that President Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. So now we're at 100 days. Hasn't happened. And I guess there's not much accountability for those kind of promises. But leaving that aside, look, when we were talking about tariffs, one of the effects of tariffs is all of these companies that are trying to plan for Christmas are
now can't do it. They can't make the contracts, buy the stuff they need because prices are going to be too high and they won't be able to make ends meet. So people are talking about Trump has really taken a real whack at Christmas. Here's someone who's getting Christmas early, Vladimir Putin. just go down the list of things that he's gotten, that he's wanted, and he's gotten for free.
And it's like the best Christmas ever. Somehow, the person and country that committed this horrific aggression against Ukraine, against its people, and against the entire international system, all the rules that we had put in place to try to prevent war, somehow absolved from that. Upfront, unilaterally, we're talking about basically giving him
the territory that he seized by force, recognizing the seizure of Crimea back in 2014, lifting the sanctions, even lifting the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that we managed to get the Germans to stop that sent Russian gas to Germany and to Europe. Now they're talking about
lifting that and recreating Europe's energy dependence on Russia, and so on down the list, blocking Ukraine from ever getting into NATO. Somehow, we're punishing the victim, we're rewarding the aggressor. So it really is an early Christmas for Vladimir Putin.
Look, first, Tim, you go back, and we tried to make sure that the Ukrainians had what they needed when they needed it to fend off the Russian aggression.
If you look at it, well before the aggression, when we were trying to build this extraordinary coalition of countries to help defend Ukraine, to help strengthen NATO, to help punish the Russians if they went in, we were sending weapons to the Ukrainians September before the aggression, Christmas before the aggression. So when it actually happened,
They had a lot of javelins and a lot of stingers in their hands, and they were able to repel the aggression. People thought that Russia was going to roll over the country in a matter of a few days. They pushed them back, and they pushed them back. 50% of the territory that Russia originally grabbed, they're pushed back from. Then at every step along the way,
We tried to make sure that they had what they needed. And the nature of the war changed, where it was being fought, how it was being fought, what was needed. And each and every time, you know, there'd be some kind of public dispute about, oh, did we give them a certain weapon system fast enough? A lot goes into those decisions. It's not just the weapon system.
It's do they know how to use it, which means you've got to train them on it. Can they maintain it, which means you've got to put that in place. Is it part of a coherent battle plan? All of those things, you know, the Pentagon was looking at, we were looking at, try to make sure that when we were doing something, it would actually work and make sense.
Are there things that, you know, I would have liked to have seen done sooner or faster? Sure, there's always something. But by and large, this was done in a very deliberate, very systematic way. And the result is a country that shouldn't be around given the totally disproportionate force that Russia could bring to bear versus Ukraine is still standing.
You know, on one level, you say to yourself, there's pretty much everything you'd wanted. There's something about everything you've done. Oh, we could have done something a little bit different here, a little bit better there. There's no question about that.
And I think the thing that will eat at me for a long time is obviously the Middle East and Gaza and the horrific human suffering that we saw on all sides. And we've gotten to a better place faster than we did, which ultimately we did when we left office. But unfortunately, that's also something. that seems to have been dropped. But as I'm looking at the really big picture, what I'm seeing is this.
President Biden came to office with probably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst global health crisis in at least 100 years, relationships with our allies and partners that had been badly frayed, if not torn apart, and of course, profound divisions at home. And what he handed off
at least, when he left office, was an economy that the economists called the envy of the world, even if people were not feeling some of the benefits as much as they needed to be. Obviously, gotten through COVID in ways that everyone's now forgotten. And we had the strongest relationships and partnerships with allies in Europe and Asia and well beyond than we've had in as long as I can remember.
And that put us in a position of extraordinary strength to deal with all of these challenges that we see around the world. Unfortunately, that's all been torn up in the space of 100 days.
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