Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State

Washington, D.C.

Harry S Truman Building

QUESTION:  Secretary Blinken, thanks for coming to the New Yorker Radio Hour with – and this turns out to be your absolute exit interview.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  (Laughter.)  That’s right.

QUESTION:  I think we can acknowledge that in the position that you have that sometimes you have to stick to talking points or formal language, but with all due respect, I’m hoping that we can peel aside some of that – at least some of that caution and confront some serious and even contentious questions more directly than before.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I’ll do my best to take on my deep-rooted instincts of caution and sticking to talking points.

QUESTION:  (Laughter.)  Exactly.  So let’s start with the Middle East, which is always a good place to begin.  Before October 7th, your colleague, the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, wrote a 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs magazine, and he wrote, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is far quieter than it has been for decades.”  He even congratulated the administration for having what he called “de-escalated” the crises in Gaza.

Now, this went to print on October 2nd.  How did the Biden administration, seemingly before October 7th, get things wrong?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, I think when you look at where we were before October 7th, and I think what Jake was talking about or writing about – rightly so – were the efforts we were making, and I think making real progress on, to bring countries together – not to try to change the nature of the regimes or the systems but to try to change the relationships among them, to integrate the region.  And the fact is, up until October 7th we were making good progress on that, building on the Abraham Accords that the first Trump administration initiated, bringing disparate countries together – everyone from, in one case, the UAE, Israel, India, and the United States – on common projects, working with the Abraham Accord countries to actually do things together, concrete things that would deliver results for people in each of those countries.

And what we were really focused on in that moment was kind of the ultimate culmination of the Abraham Accords, and that was normalization between Saudi Arabia and between Israel.  And in fact, David, on October 10th of 2023, I was scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia and Israel —

QUESTION:  I know.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  — to try to work on resolving some of the remaining issues on that.

QUESTION:  Well, I understand that.  But the critique of the Abraham Accords was that it was missing a very vital piece, and that was what to do with the Palestinian question.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yeah.  That’s exactly – that’s exactly right.  Actually, that’s exactly what I was going to the region to focus on in the context of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.  We knew that for us and also for the Saudis, getting to normalization required also having a credible pathway toward a Palestinian state.  We saw it as essential not just to normalization but —

QUESTION:  Are you saying that the Israelis were prepared to make a very serious accommodation?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  So this is – this was and remains an incredibly important question.  Because even as we speak today, even with everything that’s happened since October 7th, I believe that there is a possibility, an opportunity, to actually move forward on integration, to move forward on normalization.  But it requires two things:  It requires an end to Gaza and it requires a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.

I’ve sat with the leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, on many occasions before and after October 7th.  And before October 7th, having that credible pathway for a Palestinian state was important.  But since then, since October 7th, the price has gone up and it’s more than important; it’s essential.

QUESTION:  How do you mean the price – how do you mean the price has gone up?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Meaning that I think for the Saudis – let me put it this way.  On one of these occasions when I was meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, he reminded me that about 70 percent of the Saudi population is younger than he is, and that’s saying something because he’s very young.  And before October 7th, they were not focused on Palestine, on the cause of Palestinian self-determination.  Since October 7th, they’ve been fixated on it.  And in order for him to be able to proceed with normalization, it’s very clear that he has to have at the least a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.  And that, I think, is more deeply felt, more strongly felt now than it was before October 7th.

But here’s the thing that I think is why this question remains so important.  First, I’ve also had many opportunities to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and when the conversation comes to normalization with Saudi Arabia, that’s the point at which he sits up, leans forward, leans in.  He knows that for Israel, too, that would be an absolute game changer.  Because think of it this way:  The one thing that Israelis have wanted from day one of their founding, the one thing that they’ve sought the most, was to be treated like any other country – to have normal relations in the region.

QUESTION:  I understand that, but he sits up and takes notice when these – when the Saudi question comes up with normalization.  How does his body language change when the Palestinian question comes?  Because it seems his interest in normalization there is quite something else.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, it may well be, but the point is that to get there, to get to normalization, that road leads through a pathway for Palestine in the context of two states.  So he, other Israelis, Israeli society will have to choose.  They’ll have to decide if that’s the path that they are ready and willing and able to travel in order to get to normalization.  We can’t answer that question for them.

QUESTION:  Now, it’s hard to count the number of former American presidents and diplomats who’ve left their posts infuriated by their experience when dealing with Benjamin Netanyahu.  This has been going on for a very long time.  In Bob Woodward’s most recent book – a book that I think, if I learned how to read, has the imprints of the administration’s highest-level security and foreign policy voices as sources – President Biden is quoted as saying, “That son of a bitch Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy.  He’s a bad fucking guy.”  This was in the spring of 2024.  What is your honest assessment of working with Benjamin Netanyahu?  Is he trustworthy as an interlocutor?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  One of the mistakes that I think people make is to ascribe to Prime Minister Netanyahu all of the policies and actions that Israel is taking that they don’t like or, beyond don’t like, profoundly contest.  And I say that because I think what we’ve seen in Israel since October 7th is a reflection not of an individual prime minister, not of individual members of his cabinet, but genuinely a reflection of 70, 75 percent, 80 percent of Israeli society.

The trauma – societal trauma – is reflected in its policies and support for those policies.  Even those who —

QUESTION:  I get that, but what I’m asking you is does he deal with you truthfully.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  In our conversations, in the moment of those conversations, yes.  (Laughter.)  But look, one of the things that —

QUESTION:  You’re laughing.  Why are you laughing?  In the moment – then what happens?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, I’m laughing because —

QUESTION:  What happens when your airplane door slams shut and you leave?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yeah, no, I’m laughing because particularly right now in Israel, given the incredibly complicated politics and coalition politics that exist, I think he proceeds in many ways on the basis of what gets me to tomorrow and keeps my coalition together.  And so if – he might say one thing to me, and then depending on the audience he’s before next, maybe that takes a little bit of a different turn.

QUESTION:  A lot of people are dying in the meantime.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yeah.  Well, the point is this:  We have been laboring to try to get to a better place in Gaza, and particularly to get a ceasefire that brings the hostages home, that stops the firing in both directions, that surges humanitarian assistance, that also creates space to get something permanent.

As we’re sitting here together, we’re – I hope – finally, belatedly on the brink of getting that.  And everything that we’ve done, everything that I’ve done, everything that my colleagues have done these past months, has been in service of getting to that point, because we believed it was the quickest and most effective way to actually end the conflict and get to a better place.

So in the course of doing that, sure, there are many moments of frustration and more, and I can think of – I can think of a lot of them.  But you have to keep your eye on the prize.

QUESTION:  Now, you’ve said more than once that what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide.  You were asked this by The New York Times and you simply said no.  You didn’t really elaborate.  So I wonder what your definition of genocide is when the State Department has classified what’s gone on in Sudan and with the Uyghurs as genocides.  I more than realize how powerful a charge that is, maybe not least when it comes to Israel considering its history and the history of the Jewish people in the ‘40s, and yet.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Simply put, the intent – the intent – to erase a population, and that’s not what I see or what’s going on in Gaza, as horrible, as horrific as conditions are for innocent children, women, and men who are caught up in a crossfire of Hamas’s initiation that they obviously didn’t start and that they’re powerless to stop.  As horrific as that is, and as much as one can – and as we have disputed some of the actions that Israel has taken – it does not by a long stretch amount to the intent to erase a population.  That’s not what’s happening.

QUESTION:  Do you think such charges are antisemitic?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I don’t want to ascribe motives to the charges that people are making.  And also, look, I more than understand the passions that people feel on all sides of this issue.

QUESTION:  Secretary Blinken, you gave sort of a farewell speech at the State Department today addressing the Middle East in particular, and you said something curious.  You said that too few people, if any, have focused much on the Hamas regime in Gaza and its horrific actions on October 7th.  With respect, I don’t see that – and not in this publication, not in the best newspapers that I could name.  Plenty of publications, even as they document the destruction and death and Gaza, have gone a long way toward describing the nature of Sinwar and Hamas.  Do you disagree with that?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  As I hear it around the world, not just in the region but well beyond but in – and also in our own country, there is a chorus of condemnation of Israel.  And again, I understand why people get to that point, but I still hear deafening silence when it comes to Hamas.  And I really believe that if there had been a sustained, public, vocal demand that Hamas put down its arms, that it give up the hostages, that maybe many, many months ago Hamas would have felt pressured to actually do that, and a lot of this suffering would have been alleviated.  But I really hear deafening silence about Hamas. Look –

QUESTION:  You’ve heard deafening – I mean, I don’t mean to be defensive —

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  No.

QUESTION:  But even as somebody who’s written a 10,000-word profile of Sinwar, deafening silence on Hamas?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I wish The New Yorker was reflective of all of our media, all of our social media, and —

QUESTION:  Social media is something else.  Social media is —

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, but unfortunately, social media is what —

QUESTION:  Everybody plays to their team.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yeah, but social media, as we both know well, is so much of what drives conversations and drives perceptions.

QUESTION:  At the same time, the politics are such that the chorus for annexation of the West Bank, for potentially resettling – putting settlements back into Gaza, if not expelling more people from Gaza, has grown louder and more prevalent in Israeli politics, and not just on the far, far, far right.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  It’s grown louder.  I don’t think it represents a majority, but it’s certainly grown louder.  And to your point, not just voices, but actions, including on the West Bank – more settlements, more illegal outposts.

QUESTION:  More violence.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  More taking of land, more violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers than we’ve seen at any time in the recent past.  But I think what’s also evident is this – start with Gaza.  Right now, Israel has accomplished what it sought to accomplish in trying to ensure that October 7th couldn’t happen again.  It has destroyed the military capacity of Hamas, and, of course, it’s dealt with the leaders who are responsible for October 7th.

If it stays in Gaza, it’s going to get bogged down there.  There is going to be an enduring insurgency.  By our assessment, Hamas has been able to recruit almost as many new militants as have been killed, and we see that every day in the north, where Israel has cleared an area and then Hamas returns; Israel goes back.  That is a recipe for perpetual war.  It’s a recipe dealing with an insurgency ad infinitum.

QUESTION:  I agree.  In your speech – in your speech today, you gave a lot of time and credibility to and hope for the Palestinian Authority’s role in this situation going ahead, which is – oh were it so, but it’s extremely weak and even more unpopular, as you well know.  And on the Israeli side, Bibi Netanyahu continues to dominate the Israeli political scene.  Anybody that’s risen up as a potential challenger to him, either within his party or outside of his party, has the half-life of a loaf of bread.  And so the prospects for what you are hoping seem to be extremely far off.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, in this moment, David, no one’s ready for that conversation.  I acknowledge it.  But it proceeds in steps.  The first step is getting an end to the conflict in Gaza, and again, as we speak, we’re on the brink at least of getting an initial ceasefire.  Then it’s turning that ceasefire into something permanent.  And in order to do that, we have to have understandings, we have to have arrangements for what’s going to fill into Gaza for security, for governance and administration, for reconstruction that is not Israel and not Hamas.  And we’ve done a lot of work on that over the last six months with Arab partners, with others.

QUESTION:  Absolutely.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  So that we can hand over a plan to the incoming administration – which it can use or not use, look at or not look at – to do that.  But if we can get to that point where we have a permanent ceasefire, okay, Gaza is then settled down – at extraordinary, excruciating cost, but that’s one piece.

And then I come back to what we were talking about before, which is, again, why I believe that the road to finally resolving the Palestinian question is still there, and that is the prospects for Israel of finally integrating the region, finally having normal relations with everyone.  We saw powerfully what that can mean for Israel’s security when, not once but twice, Iran attacked Israel – the first time, unprecedented, hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones.  And what happened?  Because of countries that we, the United States, put together – including countries in the region – Israel was defended.  The attacks failed.

QUESTION:  I’m speaking with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  We’ll continue our conversation in a moment.  This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come.

(Break.)

QUESTION:  I’ll return now to my conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  He has finished his work with the Biden White Houe and he is turning the reins over to a new administration.  Donald Trump’s State Department will almost certainly be led by Marco Rubio of Florida, who seems at this point a shoo-in for confirmation.

You’ve got Tulsi Gabbard in intelligence, Pete Hegseth in defense – seems likely to be – to make his way to the top, at home domestically Kash Patel.  How will this team serving under President Trump, who President Biden has in no uncertain terms and everybody in your administration has described as everything from dangerous to unstable to authoritarian, what does that spell in your mind for the future when it comes to a national security issue as enormous and as complex and as dangerous as the Middle East?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, David, as someone who actually worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff for six years, I hate to get ahead of the Senate confirmation process.  So let’s see what actually happens over the course of the next week.  But let me – look, let me just say this.  I’ve had – (laughter).  I’ve had a number of conversations with Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio, who I’ve known for years in part because of his service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  And at the risk of damming him with praise that he might not want, we’ve had really good conversations about —

QUESTION:  And Tulsi Gabbard?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I don’t know her, have not talked to her.  But I do know Senator Rubio and I think he is extremely well-prepared for the job by his service on the Foreign Relations Committee, on the Intelligence Committee, and he is deeply thoughtful about most of the things we have to confront.

QUESTION:  I want to switch to Russia if you don’t mind.  I know you have limited time.  Do you think Zelenskyy is inclined to or can sell to his people the notion of a Ukrainian future in which they lose 20-odd percent of their territory for the foreseeable future?  And can Putin reconcile himself to that future in which Ukraine – the heart of it, the remaining 80 percent or whatever it is – is in fact free, sovereign, and aligned with the West?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  It depends, I suppose, for each how they see the alternative.  In the case of Zelenskyy, he has to be responsive to the Ukrainian people.  And if the Ukrainian people feel, believe, desire that there be a resolution or at least a ceasefire, then I suspect that he’ll reflect that in the policies he pursues.  But he has to be responsive to them.

Look, here’s what I think the fundamental issue’s going to be, especially for the incoming administration as they’re looking at this:  If there’s going to be a ceasefire, we’ve tried to do everything possible to make sure that Ukraine could – if that’s the decision it made to pursue a ceasefire, they could do it from a position of strength.  And I think it’s also in the interest of the Trump administration to make sure that if a deal is cut, it’s a good deal, a strong deal.  President Trump prides himself in making the best deals.

So it needs to be from a position of strength, but there’s something else that’s critical.  One thing that has to be built into any resolution – and when I say “resolution,” I really mean a ceasefire, because there’s not going to be an ultimate resolution in the near term.  The question – the status of the territories currently under Russian control probably won’t be resolved for a long time.  But if there is going to be a ceasefire, it has to be one that holds, and that means that there has to be a credible deterrent, because Putin will use any ceasefire to rest, refit, and then eventually re-attack.

QUESTION:  Do you think the Russians and the Chinese are thrilled to see a second Trump administration?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Oh, I think there are different ways that each of them probably looks at it.  They probably see some things that they like and some things that they’d have to be concerned about too, because —

QUESTION:  How would you spell it out?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, a certain degree of unpredictability is – can be useful, and it may be that in the case of adversaries, competitors, that’s something that does concern them.  But the real question is how that actually plays out in practice.  What are the policies that the administration pursues?  What’s the effect of those policies?  That’s the – that’s where the rubber meets the road.  So at some point you actually have to make decisions.  You have to choose.  You have to pursue a certain policy.  So we’ve got to see how that plays out.

QUESTION:  If China were to move to seize and occupy and take over Taiwan, how would the Biden administration have behaved, and how do you think the Trump administration will behave?  It seems very different on this issue.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, we’ve done everything possible to make sure that it didn’t come to that point and that that was not a decision that anyone had to make.  And I think we’ve been very successful in doing that for a number of reasons.  First, of course, look, I think from China’s perspective —

QUESTION:  But I’m saying if they had invaded, would you have sent American troops to Taiwan?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, we – we’ve said, and I’ll continue to say, that we would do everything possible to ensure that Taiwan had the means to defend itself.  But part of that —

QUESTION:  That’s a pretty tall order.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Part of that, though, is making sure that – and this gets back to Ukraine, among other things.  One of the reasons that our response to Ukraine was so important was because this aggression committed against Ukrainians and against the country was also an aggression against some pretty basic principles at the heart of the international system that everyone looks at.  And had we allowed this to go forward with impunity, the message to would-be aggressors anywhere is open season, you can get away with it.

One of the most powerful moments in the aggression against Ukraine was when the Japanese prime minister, half a world away – Kishida, the then-prime minister, who stood up almost immediately, put in his lot with Ukraine and said what’s happening in Ukraine today could be happening in East Asia tomorrow.  That’s why this response has been so important not just for Ukraine – as important as that may be – but because of what it says more broadly.  I think China has paid very close attention to that.

At the same time, we brought country after country together with the proposition that what happens in and around Taiwan matters to them, including countries way far away from Taiwan, because you’ve got 50 percent of commercial container traffic going through that strait every day, 70 percent of the semiconductors made on Taiwan.  If there were a crisis of China’s making over Taiwan, the entire world would be affected.  We’d have an economic crisis.  That’s why we got country after country to weigh in with China, with Beijing, to say: keep the peace, preserve stability.

QUESTION:  That all may be true, but soon-to-be-President Trump has made it plain that his view of China’s relationship to Taiwan is of minimal concern to him.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  And I obviously can’t speak for him, and I also really can’t predict what he would do, how the administration will approach this.  I think he also – rightly, in my judgment – during his first term put more focus on some of the challenges coming from China.  That was a good thing.

Now, where I disagreed was the way he went about trying to meet those challenges, and that is also at the same time taking it to our allies and partners who we actually need with us if we’re going to be effective in dealing with China.  When we’re dealing, for example, with economic practices that China is engaged in that we don’t like – undercutting our companies, our workers, with overcapacity; destroying communities by flooding in subsidized products; doing all sorts of things in their trade and commercial relationships that are unfair, that we don’t do to them – when we’re taking those on alone, we’re, what, 20 percent of world GDP.  If we’re aligned with allies and partners in Europe and Asia, we’re at 40, 50, 60 percent of GDP, and China can’t ignore that.  That’s exactly what we’ve done.  David, we have more convergence now in how to deal with all of the challenges posed by China – with Europe, with Asia – than we’ve ever had before.  And that’s a source of strength.

Now, maybe we haven’t done a good enough job explaining it, just as with NATO.  People don’t want war, they don’t want conflict.  Of course.  Well, President Biden got us out of America’s longest war after 20 years.

QUESTION:  We’re roughly the same age.  We lived in the post-Soviet era when there was the illusion – I think it was an illusion – of American singularity, and now every year or so there’s another article about how Pax Americana is over.  Is it true?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  What’s true is this.  I think we’re living in a period that is in so many ways more combustible, more contested, more complicated, than any since the end of the Cold War.  And as we’ve seen it, we are moving into a new era, a new phase.

QUESTION:  What’s the greatest danger of this new era?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I think fundamentally, look, there are near-term dangers that we see playing out in Ukraine.  There are near-term dangers that you can see anywhere from Pakistan to North Korea.  But fundamentally, the larger danger I see is this:  We did construct an order after two world wars with the express design of preventing another global conflagration, and that order was always imperfect.  It’s been tested, it’s been challenged, but it basically did its job in making sure we didn’t have another global conflagration.

And with it came a lot of rules, norms, understandings of one kind or another, and we now have some revisionist powers that are contesting that entire system.  The core revisionist powers – Russia, North Korea, Iran – are testing it in certain ways.  China is testing it, I think, in a different way.  It’s the one country that has the capacity militarily, economically, politically, diplomatically to actually find a way to change the rules but in a way that reflects its interests and its values, not ours.  That’s the biggest challenge I see, and that’s the contest to —

QUESTION:  China specifically?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  And China specifically, but over many years, and there’s not a clear finish line.  And I think the challenge for us, for any American administration, is amplified by this:  One of the things – I’ve been doing this now for 32 years; I came in at the very beginning of the Clinton administration, I’m going out at the end of the Biden administration.   And it goes a little bit, David, to the business you’re in so effectively.  Back then, 32 years ago, when I went to my office at the White House – well, first at the State Department, then at the White House – I did what everyone else does, or did back then, is you got up in the morning, opened the front door of your apartment or your house, picked up a hard copy of The New York Times and The Washington Post or maybe The Wall Street Journal.  And then if you had a TV in your office, if you had a TV in your office, you turned it on at 6:30 and you got the national network news.

Now, of course, we all have this intravenous feed of information and we’re getting new inputs every millisecond, and the pressure to simply react is more intense than it’s ever been.  And no one has the distance, the buffer, to really try to reflect and to think before you act, that – at least it’s really much harder to do that.  The speed with which things is happening is much harder.

The multiplicity, the complexity, the interconnectedness of challenges is greater than it’s ever been.  So I keep joking about this, but my friend Tom Friedman wrote a column a few months ago that I love because it said: parents, don’t let your sons and daughters grow up to be secretary of state.  (Laughter.)

QUESTION:  Well, Mr. Secretary, you’re going to – I assume you’re going to give yourself a week off at least after the inauguration.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Oh, you bet.

QUESTION:  And maybe you’ll write a book.  And you’ve been working with Joe Biden for a very long time, a very long time, and you’re – I don’t know anybody in government that’s closer to Joe Biden.  And you’ve spelled out here and in other venues his virtues and what you see as your successes and your analysis of the administration.

We are, though, ending this era when even very friendly commentators feel that this administration is ending with a central tragedy in that Joe Biden is doing what he never wanted to do, which was to hand the presidency back to his historical foe who he considers a deep danger to matters domestic and foreign, and it’s quite likely that had he decided not to run a second time we might not be in this position, and that he made a perhaps understandable human decision but born of some denial of the human condition and mortality.  Do you wish that he had made a very different decision and not run a second time, and do you think that his aging was to some degree overlooked or even covered up?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  David, here’s what – here’s what I saw.  And you’re right; I’ve worked with the President for more than 20 years and it’s really been the greatest privilege of my professional career, starting in the Senate, then as vice president. and then as president.  And do we – do we all change as we get older?  Yeah, absolutely.  When you get to a certain age are you likely to slow down a little bit?  Of course.  But – and this is the – this is the God’s truth because I was in the Oval Office and the Situation Room and everywhere else in between with him for four years.  Whether you agree or not, whether you like or not, I can tell you that every decision that was made, every policy that was pursued, reflected his judgment and his decision. It’s not like someone else was doing it.

QUESTION:  And I know you’ve said this both sincerely and elsewhere —

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  But do you really think he had the capacity to not only finish out this term but to be president of the United States at the highest level for another four years?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, I think that’s the – I think that’s the – exactly the question.  And I believe that in answering that question for himself, he came to the conclusion that while he was doing the job now, it was hard to say whether he could do it in the same way for another four years.  And I think that’s ultimately what motivated his decision to pull out, to pull back.  That’s exactly what – what drove him.

QUESTION:  You’ll forgive me, and I say this with genuine respect.  What I’m hearing mainly is loyalty, and maybe – and it’s a very hard thing to grapple with specifically at this time.  Am I right?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  No, I think – yeah, I certainly hope loyalty because he’s more than – more than earned it as the person that he is and the president he’s been.  But no, beyond that, look, I think if I felt that he wasn’t – wasn’t up to the job, that’s something that I would have —

QUESTION:  You would have had that conversation with him?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I would have had that conversation.  But —

QUESTION:  And you didn’t?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  But I saw – everything that I experienced myself was when it came to grappling with all these issues, when it came to debating them, when it came to looking at them from every angle, when it came to making decisions, when it came to having judgments, his were strong, his were sound.

QUESTION:  So when you saw that debate with Trump, it was an aberration and a shock?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  It was.  It was.  Now, a lot goes into that.  And I think, look, one of the things that I think may have been missed in that period is – and this is not something he said to me; this is just by way of observation as someone who knows him and knows his family well.  I think that the impact in that period of time of the prosecution of his son weighed very, very, very heavily on him.

QUESTION:  To the degree where he performed the way he did in that debate?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, I just think it was a very, very heavy weight and maybe one that we saw reflected a little bit more visibly in those – in those days and in those weeks.

QUESTION:  Secretary Blinken, thank you so much.  I appreciate your time.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  David, great to talk to you.  Thanks.