so who are the people who will have the
daunting job
of keeping us safe the president-elect
is building a cabinet
to return to normalcy as he often says
most will be quite familiar with the
white house and are poised to reverse
much of president trump's america first
agenda biden's secretary of state pick
is long-time aide
tony blinken described by the uk's
independent as
quote a veteran of washington's old
school foreign policy elite
he's a far cry from secretary of state
mike pompeo
known for his bluntness and background
in the military and the united states
senate
joining me now to compare all of these
folks is k.t mcfarland former deputy
national security adviser for the trump
administration
and author of revolution trump
washington and we the people kt great to
see you tonight thank you for being here
um tell me a little bit about anthony
blinken and the
the choices and decisions that he made
in the last administration
that might help people understand where
his where he comes from what his frame
of reference is
well anthony blinken as well as all the
other appointments that president um
elect if we call him that biden has
talked about are all people who have the
same jobs
same offices in the obama administration
they're all just stepping up one more
notch on the wrong
the problem with all of them is that
this is the group
who you know initially failed out to
understand the crisis in the middle east
they failed to understand the threat
posed by the islamic state by
isis but most importantly as they were
focused on the middle east they took
their eye off the ball on china
now this is globalism writ large and the
first thing that's going to go out the
window
is as you just pointed out america first
these guys are going to get out the
american checkbook
they're going to rejoin all the
international organizations which we
underwrite and pay for
and the problem is that none of them are
going to stand up to china
if passed is any indication of where
they're going in the future these are
the people
martha who who who looked at scans and
just didn't think china was a threat
as china started building a maritime
trade route to challenge our own
a land-based trade route to challenge
our own it started this
again stealing american technology
trying to
command the dominating heights of the
technology revolution
china is making no secret now that it
plans to replace the united states as
the world's dominant power
within a few years and the worry is for
me that the biden administration
particularly someone
like lincoln and and john kerry and
others are just going to let them do it
yeah i mean i think all americans hope
that there's a clear-eyed sense
of the threats that we face around the
world and when you look back to the
serious situation
and a lot of this team was in place when
president obama said you know chemical
weapons would be a red line for us
if we started seeing that happening we
would have to act
and then the decision was made not to
act and we would also remember
what happened right after president
trump took office
and that was that missiles were uh fired
in retaliation for those actions so i
mean it clearly
you know just just based on their own
history and what we know about
the decisions that they made in the past
it does seem
like a group that is going to be much
more interested in
in diplomacy is that fair yeah
but diplomacy here's the problem with
diplomacy if you don't have leverage
if you're not negotiating from a
position of strength you're not really
negotiating you're just begging
you're just pleading with some other
country to do your bidding
without the leverage and without the
leverage the economic leverage without
the
um technological leverage without the
energy leverage
all of which they're going to give up
then i don't think that diplomacy
matters one single bit diplomacy is just
a bunch of guys sitting around a table
sort of hoping for the best the one
thing you can say about president trump
tough and and sometimes rough as he is
he he was a strong leader has been a
very strong leader
and he's the first american president of
both parties
to stand up to the chinese and my
concern again
is that we're running out of time you
know it used to be the chinese thought
well by mid-century they're going to
dominate american
dominate world politics and then rewrite
the international rules of order
their the pandemic has speeded up their
timeline they plan to get there within
five years
kt always good to have you here thank
you very much k.t mcfarland thanks for
watching