A Quote by Antony Blinken
If Xi Jinping is the world's most powerful man, conventional wisdom puts Vladimir Putin a close second. He's made his own bare-chested virility synonymous with a resurgent Russia.
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By heralding President Xi Jinping's accession to permanent leadership, soliciting Vladimir Putin's reentry into the Group of Seven, and declaring that Kim Jong Un is 'beloved by his people,' Trump legitimizes the very behavior that U.S. presidents opposed for decades.
President Obama is in China now for an economic summit in Beijing. The president wore a traditional purple silk shirt along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. That's after they taught Putin how to put a shirt ON.
Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is a good guy, Russia is okay, no it's not. Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.
[Vladimir Putin] complimented him. That led Donald Trump to then compliment Vladimir Putin and to defend Vladimir Putin's actions in a number of places around the world.
In 2014, we were opposing President Xi Jinping. Five years later, we are opposing Emperor Xi Jinping.
We deal, unfortunately, every single day with leaders of countries who are responsible for actions we find either objectionable or abhorrent, whether it's Vladimir Putin, whether it's Xi Jinping, whether it's any others on a long list of people I can name. But we find ways to deal with them.
I don't understand what the president's [Donald Trump] position is on Russia. But I can tell you what my position is on Russia: Russia is a great danger to a lot of its neighbors, and [Vladimir] Putin has as one of his core objectives fracturing NATO, which is one of the greatest military alliances in the history of the world.
It's more of a strength model to say that [Vladimir] Putin will do what it takes to defend his country. But that's why Putin is dangerous and Russia is a major cause of concern for us .
When I was on an American show in 2015, I tried to talk about the threat Vladimir Putin posed to the free world. The interviewer said, "Wake me up when he takes over Poland." We heard something similar from years ago and we ended up with World War Two. Putin decided to skip Poland and went straight to Wisconsin. Putin is at war, a hybrid war, with the free world. His domestic propaganda is based entirely on a strong man challenging the free world. When the demonstrations around Russia began, the harsh response was because it was more important to show strength.
Everybody was upset that Vladimir Putin was missing. He was in Switzerland with his girlfriend. She had a baby in Switzerland because in Russia childbirth is not covered by Putin-care.
If Vladimir Putin is conscious and aware of his standing in the world economy, he has to understand this aggression in Crimea is not helping the reputation of Russia as a modern nation where you can do business. He's back to the old Soviet ways and a lot of folks are going to hold back and pull back as a result of it. I think he may have second thoughts.
China is ruthlessly pragmatic. It supports North Korea for its own selfish interests. And I believe that China no longer considers us an ally. The current president, Xi Jinping, cultivates close relations with South Korea. He has never met with me, the leader of North Korea, something that the leader of China has always done. At the grand celebrations in Beijing two years ago commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, he placed the president of Russia and the president of South Korea at his side. In North Korea, we pay a lot of attention to ceremonies and what they signal.
I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. Vladimir Putin called me on the inauguration. We had a very good talk, especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. But have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.
Vladimir Putin bribed a soccer official with a Picasso painting so he would support Russia's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Putin was like, 'It wasn't Picasso, just picture of what his face would look like if he said no.' (Nose over here, eye up here, ear in forehead.)
Vladimir Putin doesn't really gain anything economically from annexation of Crimea. It's more a gain of power. It's a gain of what he can say to his home population about what he's accomplished as president. And so it's really much more an individual gain for Putin politically than for Russia as a state, because over the long term, Russia is not going to particularly benefit from this.
The Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections with pro-Putin forces. Governor Pence made the odd claim, he said inarguably Vladimir Putin is a better leader than President Obama. Vladimir Putin has run his economy into the ground. He persecutes LGBT folks and journalists. If you don't know the difference between dictatorship and leadership, then you got to go back to a fifth-grade civics class.
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