Remarkable video footage appeared to capture Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s soul being crushed in real time as he watched President Joe Biden call Xi Jinping a “dictator”—again—on Wednesday. Blinken was in attendance for a news conference following Biden’s meeting with the Chinese leader in San Francisco ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Biden was asked toward the end of the news conference if he stood by his comment in June in which he called Xi a dictator. “Look, he is,” Biden answered. “He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.” As the president spoke, Blinken appeared to grimace and take a deep breath in. It’s hardly surprising that the United States’ most senior foreign policy official would be uncomfortable. On Thursday, Blinken told CBS News that the relationship with China is “one of the most consequential relationships we have.”
