YouSaid · the spoken record

Tony Blinken

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2020-12-24

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2020-12-24

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1. “But also for the New York Times, writing for them on a monthly basis. And I have to say, at this moment in our history, journalism's never been more important. I agree what it is.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “We're working very hard with Vice President Biden on exactly that, something called the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. And we brought some very good people together and the University of Pennsylvania is very, very focused on this project. But it is in large part designed to do what we were talking about a little bit earlier, which was to look at the challenges now to the liberal order that the United States helped to build and shape over the last 70 years, to think about how we do a better job defending it, but also to focus on how we amend it. So that's something I'm very excited about because it's so necessary. I also have the privilege of being an enemy of the people. I get to work for something you're familiar with, CNN.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “You can't occupy That's right. And either you have a choice. Either you're going to be democratic, that is allow them all their rights, in which case the state will no longer be Jewish, or you're not going to be democratic because you're going to have to deny them their rights in order to retain its Jewish character. I don't think anyone wants to be, you know, we talk about, oh, are we closing the door on a two-state solution? I would put this differently. I would say, are we closing the door on a Jewish democratic Israel? That's what's at stake.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “That's right. And look, and there may be a play there. But I think at best. Incremental steps on all sides are probably what's needed to try to get back to some basic modicum of trust. But here's the thing. At the end of the day, the status quo isn't static. And Israel is now at the point, or very, very close to the point where the dream of a Jewish and democratic state is gone. And this generation.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Honestly, I'd like to think so simply because it would be so profoundly in the interest of everyone involved. Extraordinarily difficult this is going to be at this particular moment. The politics in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority don't augur well for moving things forward. There is also this outside in approach of trying to get the Arabs to play a leading role in moving the process forward. Not exactly a new idea, something that we worked on very hard.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Who you know well, former colleague of yours. I've heard these same reports, and I think in particular the person that President Trump's designated to be the point person on this. Jeremy Greenlatt has, by all accounts, has been doing a terrific job. And exactly as you say, has been talking to everyone. More important has been listening”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “It puts a dead weight around it. Look, we've all experienced this when a president goes abroad having a problem at home. On the one hand, he hopes this is a great opportunity to change the subject, often though that doesn't work because the press corps that comes along with him is usually asking me about the problem back home. This is that on steroids. This is a dead weight around the trip. And it's an incredibly important one to incredibly important partners, allies, or in some cases less than that, but countries that have a real impact on our own security and prosperity going forward. So it's going to be a very big challenge to actually focus on the issues at hand. And you're going to have a White House staff with you that is all at once trying to play defense against what's coming from back home while also trying to do what's necessary to have a successful trip. That's an almost impossible hurdle.”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “That's certainly obviously adds to the suspicion, as does the firing of Mr. Comey. But even so, this gets back to this point that it's not good enough to say, look, he just didn't know any better”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Of the meeting because if that memo in fact exists, and I have every reason to believe that it does, and if it accurately reflects what it's reported to say, which is that the president tried to get him to lay off the investigation and prosecution of Mike Flynn, it's obviously a real problem. Look, here too, let's for a second give the president the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that really what was motivating him was, look, he just had to fire this guy, Mike Flynn. He suffered enough. Trying to help a friend. He's just trying to help a friend, which is a human instinct”

   2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Well, my first thought, David, was that these are chickens coming home to us. Because remember, just a few days before that, the president had unleashed this veiled threat in Comey's direction, saying, of our meeting when Comey said that the president asked for a loyalty oath. Ironically, it turns out the president should have been the one hoping there's no memo.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Russia today and Sputnik the propaganda arms of the Russian government when he talked about massive electoral fraud after the election, those were the same talking points the Russians had been putting out all of that advanced exactly what Putin was trying to achieve doubt about our system and its legitimacy now by his actions again wittingly or not he's undermined the investigations into what Russia was doing”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “And he has now succeeded beyond his wildest imagination in doing just that in the United States, not just in Western Europe, even more so in the United States. He managed to sow doubt about our electoral system. He managed to help defeat the candidate that he despised, Hillary Clinton. He managed to get the first National Security Advisor fired. He managed to instigate multiple counterintelligence investigations. And now he's managed in effect to cause the president to fire the FBI director who is investigating him because of concerns about collusion with Russia. And every step along the way, either knowingly or not, wittingly or not, President Trump has aided and abetted this effort at delegitimizing our institutions and our leaders. When he was talking about how the election was going to be rigged before the election in November, those were exactly the talking points of”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Yeah, but this goes back to me what the larger problem is here. And that's this. Step back to the election. And what was Russia trying to achieve in interfering on our election? It was trying to achieve what it's been trying to do throughout the West in recent years. And that is to undermine the legitimacy and credibility of our institutions and leaders, to sow doubt in our system, to create disunity that way, and also at the same time to have Putin be able to demonstrate to his own people, you know, every system is corrupt. Every system is failing. Ours is no worse. Stick with me.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “But he should have been. And it's one thing to say, look, he didn't know, he couldn't know this is not his background. This is not where he comes from. But unfortunately, it is now his number one responsibility to know better as President of the United States. So I understand it, if that's what happened, but that's also not acceptable. We can't afford that. And now what happens is this. When we have other countries providing absolutely vital intelligence to us for our own security and for their security, but who are very, very concerned about these sources and methods getting out, that is how this country got the intelligence and making sure that others don't know that because they could then stop it or interrupt it and put lives in danger. You know, we'll say to that country, look, if you give us this information, we're going to keep it very, very, very tightly compartmentalized. We're only going to show the only person we're going to share with is the president of the United States.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Well, two reactions. One reaction was specific to this problem of having shared this intelligence that was highly sensitive and was provided to us apparently by a third country specifically with So it's been reported specifically with the requirement that it not be shared. In fact, not only not shared with other countries, but not even shared within our own master.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yeah, that's right. And interestingly, I think among the strongest proponents for maintaining the State Department's budget is our military, uniform and civilian. And you've heard General Mattis speak very eloquently about the need to sustain support for the State Department. As he put it, if you cut State Department's budgets, you better give me more money because I'm going to need more bullets because there'll be more conflict.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “demonstrated the power of American diplomacy when it's at the forefront of what you're trying to do. And I hope we don't lose that either.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “The name of this group, Diplomacy Works. It's specific to Iran, but it's also specific to something that I think was a hallmark of the Obama administration, which was an emphasis on diplomacy. And when you look at the record, it was American diplomacy that got this agreement with Iran. It wouldn't have happened without it. It was American diplomacy that rallied countries around the world to deal with the Ebola outbreak. It was American diplomacy that led to the agreement in Paris on climate. It was American diplomacy that brought sixty five countries together to deal with the Islamic State. It was American diplomacy also that changed our relationship, or at least began to change the relationship with Cuba and also with Vietnam, two countries that have been thorns in the side of our foreign policy for decades. So I think...”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Is no angel But he's pragmatic, and he understands that it's in Iran's interest to be more open to the world, to be more connected. And so he's trying to shape its policies in a more pragmatic way. If he loses and the hardliners come in, they may well try to renege on the deal. Now, it's interesting because I think the Trump administration certainly expressed interest in figuring out ways out of the deal, hardliners in Iran also want out, but neither wants to be blamed for it. So each is in effect trying to provoke the other into taking a step that will crater the deal. It's profoundly in our interest that that not happen. And diplomacy works was stood up to make sure that we're defending what was really one of the signal achievements of the administration for our country's security. But, you know, David, it goes to something larger.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Yeah, and that's what's one of the most interesting aspects of this. Look, we were very clear that, as Freud would say, a cigar is just a cigar sometimes. In this case, a nuclear deal is just that a nuclear deal. Now, some people talked about other impacts that it might have in terms of opening up Iran and the larger relationship. But what motivated us was dealing with a very specific problem, a very specific threat to our security and to the security of the international community. And that was Iran racing toward the capacity to have material for a nuclear bomb. But interestingly enough, in Iran itself, that's not how the hardliners see the deal. They see it as a Trojan horse designed very much to open Iran up to Western influence, to undermine the very foundations of the revolution. It's pretty interesting. They see it that way. And what's at stake in part in the selection is if Rouhani, who, by the way, is”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “They would not do it in pertunity, and it was starting to fray. So we needed to try and bring this to a head, and we needed to do it in a way that brought these other countries along and kept them with us. And that's exactly what we did. So the bottom line is, look, it's certainly possible that when some of the constraints in this deal begin to go away, 10 years out, 15 years out, 20 years out, Iran could decide to turn around and start to move back to a place where it's developing fissile material for a weapon. But we will have gained at the least ten, fifteen, twenty years. We will have gained far greater insight through the most intrusive inspections and monitoring regime ever devised of what they have, where they have it, who's involved in it, and we'll retain every option that we had when we struck the deal. to do something about it if we have to into the future.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Had we not done that a couple of things would have happened because Iran, while we were putting this pressure on, was continuing to move forward, getting closer and closer to the day when it could produce enough fissile material for nuclear weapons that it could turn around in a matter of weeks, giving us very little time to react. So we needed to deal with this. The military options were not good given the likely unintended consequences of using military action against Iran. And the pressure option was only viable if we could keep other countries on board with us.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Terrorism destabilizing activities, it's to deal with the nuclear problem. And you'll have our support as long as that's the objective. And we got a ran to the table on that basis. And then through extraordinary effort and negotiations led by John Kerry, we were able to get an agreement that manifestly has made us more secure and made every country in the region more secure. And while some countries in the region publicly disputed the deal and the benefits that it brought, in private, a lot of them, including the Israelis, actually pointed to its benefits to their security.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Absent that there would never have been sufficient pressure on Iran to actually get it to come back to the table to negotiate because as much pressure as we were putting on them, given the connectivity they had around the world with all of these different economies, unless we could get them to crack down. It wasn't going to be enough. And that's exactly what President Obama did. And that was diplomacy, diplomacy in action, and it was successful. And it got to the point where Iran was at the table. But here was the bargain. These other countries said the purpose of exerting this pressure on Iran that we'll take part in is not to get them to bring them to their knees, to change the regime, to deal with all of the other problems, including their...”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I have to say that of all the things I've been involved in in government, one of the things I'm proudest of is working on the agreement that resulted in Iran largely dismantling and mothballing its nuclear program and pushing far into the future the prospect of Iran getting enough material to make a nuclear weapon. Here's what we were confronted with at the time. We had International sanctions regime that had put pressure on Iran. And that sanctions regime is one that we actually built because when President Obama took office, there were significant domestic sanctions. But they weren't enough To really do the deal to get around”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “They're not about us. We need to understand that. We need to understand that as powerful as we are and as essential as we are to trying to mobilize collective action, to dealing with a crisis or to dealing with a threat to security, at the end of the day there are also limits to what we can accomplish and what we can achieve precisely because the problem is usually not about us, even though it affects us.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “At the same time, usually what it's able to achieve is not sustainable unless there is some kind of political and economic foundation to support it. And unless there is some basic understanding and compact political understanding and compact among the people in the country in question to sustain it, and that's what we found out in Iraq. The military did an extraordinary job, not only in obviously dealing with Saddam Hussein originally, but then over time with great sacrifice and struggle in dealing with the horrific pushback that followed. But absent some kind of political accommodation among the different factions in Iraq, you couldn't sustain what the military had gained. And so that's where the emphasis really has to be. That's one big piece of it. The other piece of it is this, David. Most of these conflicts different.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “That's right on one occasion. I remember President Obama saying, don't come back to you've gotten this straight. So I think we learned two profound lessons, well, among others, to me at least two lessons in Iraq. One is that our military can do anything that we ask it to do. It will get the job done. And that's a great source of strength and confidence for us around the world.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Not believing that it would be necessary to use it, but using it as leverage to show the world we were serious, to get the United Nations to take action, to get the inspectors back in. And actually that's exactly what happened. The United Nations voted 15 to nothing, that the inspectors had to go back in, and they went back in. And they started to do their jobs. And they were getting the access that they needed. And despite that, the Bush administration decided to proceed with the invasion. So you can say it's a little bit like, to use a really, really bad analogy. It's like the sheriff coming to the town elders saying, you know, there's a bad guy in the bar. I got to go get him out. I want your authority. If I have to, to use my gun, but I'm going in there to arrest him. And the town elders say, you know what, you've got it. If you have to do it, do it, but the goal here is to arrest him. And instead, the sheriff goes into the barn and just starts shooting.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “agreed with out of the concern that there was something really bad going on. And the way to do that is to get the United Nations inspectors back into Iraq and to be able to finish the job that they'd started to do and then were stopped from doing. And the argument was we need to show that the United States is united and that we insist that this has to happen. And to do that, we need a strong vote in Congress showing that Congress is behind us. The United States is speaking with one voice. And if we get that, we can get the United Nations to insist that the inspectors go back in and then we can get to the bottom of this problem. Well, we believe that. And Congress ultimately gave the president that support with this authorization to use force.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “You can't help but go back and think about what might we have done differently did we make a profound mistake? And of course, we did on one level. But here was the thinking. And maybe it was incredibly naive. Maybe it was an incredible misjudgment or maybe we were complicit in what turned out to be a bad mistake. Remember at the time the issue that had been surfaced was the concern that Saddam Hussein And the Bush administration's opening gambit was to say we really need to force this issue now.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “This eulogy is unvarnished. It actually traces the trajectory of Thurmond's life for bad end for good. And then Jesse Helms, when he opened the Jesse Helms Center at the University of North Carolina, he asked that Biden do the inaugural event. Those kinds of relationships across the aisle between people who couldn't be more different in what they believed, that was something very powerful. That's something that Biden also stood for.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Very much so. And there's something else that was wonderful about that period. It's kind of the end of an era. The year that I started the work for him was 2002, and that was the year that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond were retiring from the Senate. And I started working for him in May, and in September, shortly before the midterm elections in their retirement, he had a retirement party for them, which I thought in and of itself is extraordinary because how could these guys who were so different, Biden on the one hand, and then Helms and Thurmond on the other, how could they be together in this? And I watched them at this party, and I could see the visible warmth in the relationships and the friendships. Again, despite the most profound differences. And then when Senator Thurman passed away sometime later, he'd ask that Biden deliver the eulogy.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “For other people. And someone motivated, I think most of all in his understanding of human nature by this one very powerful word that I think remains more important than it's ever been, and that is dignity, that ultimately what so much of what we're trying to do in government is about making sure that we protect and defend in various ways people's sense of dignity.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “The thing that really hit me working for him, and I had not known him that well before starting to work for him. I'd been in a number of meetings. Some of us had gone up to talk to him on a sort of irregular basis. But, of course, I really got to know him working for him. And the thing that struck me most of all is that there was no difference between the public persona and the private person. What you saw was exactly what you'd get, whether it was in public or in private. And that was wonderful. There was also, and this is similar to Bill Clinton, I'd say, someone who fed off of the energy of other people Just love to be engaged with people. And also this extraordinary, beyond extraordinary, I can't even think of a word for it, empathy.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “That's right. I got a call one day right after the Clinton administration. I wound up at a think tank in Washington. And about a year in, I got a call one day from Senator Biden. He had just taken over the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, and he was looking for someone to run it, a staff director. Someone said after I took the job, hey, you've got two words in your title of staff director, only one of them counts, and it's not director. But that began. They truly, for me at least, wonderful relationship, partnership, friendship with Joe Biden, as you know, a truly extraordinary person. And we... Worked on the Foreign Relations Committee grappling with, in particular, Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, that dominated the time that we were working there.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Doing something about it. And to me. I think President Obama saw himself in part as the circuit breaker, that is no, we're not going to be just reactive to the problem. Our job is to step back. To think this through, to work this through. And I think nine times out of ten, that's exactly the right thing to do. And it takes tremendous discipline and political courage to do that. Because while you're doing that, you're being assaulted every single second.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “And the other thing we kind of did collectively was we'd get up in the morning wherever we lived, open the front door of our apartment or house, pick up a hard copy of the New York Times with the Washington Post. Now, of course, It puts this relentless pressure on people to just do something. To act, to be responsive to whatever the problem of the moment is.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Ordered logical mind that was trying in a non ideological way, at least in my judgment, to solve the country's problems and to do it with intellectual honesty and rigor and with a real discipline to it. So I think the Clinton White House arguably was not the most disciplined place. I think from my perspective, the Obama White House was, in a very good way, but the single greatest strength, and I alluded to this earlier, that I thought that President Obama brought to the enterprise was, look, the biggest change I experienced in 25 years in government was the flow of information. And the daily assault, the minute-by-minute assault of information that 25 years ago simply was not the case. In the early days of the Clinton White House, everyone did basically two things, collectively. 6.30 at night, we stopped what we were doing and we turned on the National Network News, ABC, CBSNBC.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “He ate it up every day. And that was a wonderful thing. And it sort of fed your own curiosity about things. I think, at least in my experience, President Obama brought to the job Truly remarkable qualities that, in my mind, at least drawing up I thought this is what an American president should be. First of all, his own innate decency, dignity, and integrity. And that was palpable and powerful every day. But second, as you know better than anyone, this extraordinarily”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “The great fortune of my life was to get to work for both of them because both leaders and people for whom I have extraordinary admiration having had the opportunity to see them up close. But yes, certainly different. Bill Clinton, one of the most brilliant minds I've ever been close to, someone with this extraordinary curiosity about everything and an amazing ability to pull different threads and strands together and connect them and make sense of them. I always thought in many ways the presidency was the greatest job for Bill Clinton and he was perfectly suited to it because of this curiosity. If you had that kind of insatiable thirst.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “You'd have to negotiate that. And I think ultimately you could negotiate that. But unless you can convince him that the alternative is even worse, he's not going anywhere.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “And then Kosovo, which ultimately played out over 78 days there too, a successful resolution because the United States played a leadership role. But look, these things are so hard to compare because at the end of the day, some people made the comparison between Syria and the Balkans, between Bosnia and Kosovo. In the case of Bosnia and Kosovo, we were trying to get Slobodan Milosevic to basically give up appendages to his country, not to give up power and possibly give up his life, which is what we would have been trying to do in Syria with Assad. That's one of the issues.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Had every look, we had the genocide in Rwanda, and then we had the Balkans, as you said. And it's a terrible thing to say we got better at it, but we did. And ultimately, after a lot of travail, we got to a much better place in Bosnia. But it took a long time and a lot of suffering in between. But ultimately, the United States led in bringing that war to conclusion. And Dick Holbrook played a critical role in that.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “He wanted to make the argument, he wanted to bring you along. For him a successful speech was convincing you of something. Not of leaving you with some memorable phrase, but of convincing you with something.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “The interesting thing about President Clinton was that he was not really interested in sort of high rhetoric. Now, if you're a speechwriter, you want to be Ted Sorensen. You want to come up with that incredibly memorable phrase. And you'd write these things in to President Clinton's speeches, and he would cross them out and write words, words, words on the margins.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “First of all, being, as you know, being a speechwriter in this environment is like being in the most extraordinary graduate school program you can possibly be in because you wind up being involved in just about everything. We're doing in this case on foreign policy and security. That's what I was writing on. So the education there was just unbelievable. Getting to work with the best people in our government across the government on all of these issues, trying to understand them, trying to figure out ways to communicate them and explain them. And of course, writing for Bill Clinton was an interesting challenge.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “And I thought this is really what I want to have a chance to be a part of. So I got in touch with everyone I knew who was involved with President Clinton, including some folks who've been on the caucus campaign. And by a lot of serendipity wound up in the administration at the State Department. And about a year into that got pulled over the White House to be one of his speechwriters.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Very painful. But one of the interesting aspects of that, David, was getting a chance to travel around with Bob basically across the country and meet people now, obviously, relatively affluent people for the most part in virtually every part of the country and get a real flavor in ways that I hadn't before for my own country. We went to pretty much every corner. In Paris got briefly into very unsuccessfully into the film business, started a production company, been interested in that when I was in New York at law school, had great fun for a couple of years. But as I said, very, very unsuccessful. And then Bill Clinton won.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “But Bob Farmer was so successful that the campaign, and this tells you a lot about the campaign after the general election, ended up with a surplus, didn't spend the money that was raised.”

    2020-12-24 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Best of the Axe Files: Tony Blinken · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source