The US President calling Xi Jinping a ‘dictator’ is a much more honest reflection of Washington’s attitude
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was barely back from smoothing things over with Chinese President Xi Jinping when Biden’s filter slipped at a Democratic fundraiser in California and he started dropping some truth bombs.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there. That’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” the US President said.
While not quite Trump level of name-calling, neither was it conducive to “restoring dignity to the office,” as Biden had promised during his presidential campaign. More importantly, it’s a far cry from the neutral diplomatic posture that Blinken adopted in the wake of his meeting to defuse tensions with the Chinese president. “We said what…