Top US administration officials continue to have to work overtime in cleaning up President Biden's messes.
This time it's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen who is trying to soften or walk back Biden's earlier description of Chinese President Xi Jinping as a "dictator". As we detailed Wednesday, Beijing let its fury be known over what it denounced as a "blatant political provocation". In her Thursday remarks from Paris, Yellen stressed the importance of maintaining a positive relationship with China.
"With respect to the comments, I think President Biden and I both believe it’s critical to maintain communication …to clear up misperceptions, miscalculations. We need to work together where possible," Yellen told a press conference.
"But we have disagreements, and we are also forthright in recognizing we do have disagreements," Yellen added.
Again, she's clearly trying to clean up Biden's mess, given also the timing of the president's Tuesday night remarks, issued at a fundraiser, was especially awkward given he had just dispatched Secretary of State Blinken for a two day visit to China where he met with Xi.
The irony, obvious and yet perhaps lost on Biden, is that Blinken's trip was a desperate attempt by the administration to rescue spiraling US-China relations, and with Biden's one single "dictator" comment these efforts have likely come to nothing.
Biden's remarks on Xi being caught 'unaware' by the spy balloon incident were as follows:
"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. No, I’m serious. That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened," Biden had said.
Immediately after the words hit international headlines, China's Foreign Ministry denounced them as "a blatant political provocation," saying that "China expresses strong dissatisfaction and opposition. … The U.S. remarks are extremely absurd and irresponsible."
Yellen's transparent efforts to essentially take back the 'dictator' word-choice is unlikely to satisfy Beijing to any degree. In this particular case it will be hard to merely chalk it up to Biden mere being "old" and "tired" and thus more prone to gaffes and rambling.