Ben Rhodes Blames Trump for Chinese Scolding Biden’s Secretary of State

EXCERPT:

RHODES: "Yeah, I think they knew something like this was coming. I have never seen anything quite like that, Andrea, even behind closed doors with the Chinese where meetings are usually quite scripted. I think there is a common thread between what we see with Russia and China, which is that those two countries got pretty accustomed in the last few years to the United States being essentially absent form holding up the international order, from speaking out on issues like human rights and democracy. And I think that both China and Russia wanted to test early on whether they could brush back the Biden team so that they don't raise those issues, which China and Russia don’t like to hear lectures about. They don’t like spotlights on their internal affairs. And I think this was a test as was the recall of Russian ambassador. I think frankly yesterday Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and calling back in the press after that long Chinese really at the beginning of the meeting, I think they passed the test. They showed, look, we are not just speaking for ourselves, we are speaking for our set of values, and by the way we are speaking for all these allies that we have been consulting with. They had just been in Korea and Japan. So I think it does set things up to be quite tense but I think it’s important to set red lines and then figure out how to cooperate while you've been clear about your differences."