ICYMI: Secretary Blinken Joins Sunday Shows to Highlight President Biden's First Overseas Trip Restoring U.S. Leadership on the World Stage

Today, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined four Sunday shows to highlight President Biden's efforts during his first overseas trip to restore U.S. leadership on the world stage, unite our democratic allies, and tackle the greatest challenges of our time. Secretary Blinken discussed the G7, NATO Summit, U.S.-E.U. Summit, and meeting with President Putin. He emphasized the President's commitment to building back better at home and around the world, working with like-minded leaders to defend human rights, combat climate change, and deliver for people across the globe.
See highlights below:

Secretary Blinken on CNN State of the Union with Dana Bash

On the success of the G7:

"The President came into this meeting at the G7 showing that democracies can deliver – deliver for people and people around the world. That's what we've done the last couple days … a commitment to a billion vaccines, to put shots in arms around the world – that's a powerful demonstration of democracy delivering. A commitment to deal with and stop financing coal-fired plants around the world, the single largest contributor to emission and global warming, 50% minimum global corporate tax, making sure countries around the world have a strong tax base to provide for their citizens, provide new markets for us as well, and avoid a race to the bottom. And, yes, this project to pool our resources, to invest in lower middle-income countries to get the private sector to do the same so that we can help them build up their infrastructure, their health care systems, education, and do it in a more positive way than China is doing it with its belt-and-road initiative."

On the Meeting with President Putin:

"What the President is going to make clear to Vladimir Putin is that we seek a more stable, predictable relationship with Russia. And if so, there are areas where our interests overlap. We may find ways to work together. But if Russia continues reckless and aggressive actions, we'll respond forcefully as the president has already demonstrated … This meeting is not happening in a vacuum. We're coming off the G7. We're coming off a NATO summit. We'll be coming off an EU summit as well. Our leadership and our engagement are a very powerful force. There was a major poll done across these countries, across these democracies. 75% of the people on average have confidence in American leadership. That's up from 17% a year ago. That means we're in a much stronger position to work together with these countries militarily, diplomatically, politically, economically even when it comes to challenges posed by Russia or China."

Secretary Blinken on ABC This Week with Martha Raddatz

On China and the Build Back Better for the World initiative:

"Martha, in fact, what we have is largely agreement on the need to offer a much more attractive alternative to the model that China is proposing for the world, and the communique coming out of the Summit's going to reflect that. You know back -- the last time these leaders got together, in 2018, China was not even mentioned, but here we have a commitment to work together on something called Build Back Better for the World to work on pulling investments, pulling funds, bringing the private sector in to make investments in health and infrastructure, in technology for low and middle income countries in a way that will produce new markets for our own products and also offer a much more attractive alternative to what China is trying to do in these countries.

On the G7 and democracies delivering for people:

"But across the board, I've got to say what I saw in the last couple of days -- I have been at a number of these G7s over the years, almost 25 years. This is maybe the most consequential one I've ever taken part in. This is one that's actually demonstrated that democracies coming together can deliver in concrete ways for their people and for people around the world. A million vaccine doses for countries around the world. A commitment to put in place a better system to prevent the next pandemic or to mitigate it. This commitment on building back better for the rest of the world, an agreement on getting a corporate minimum tax of 15 percent around the world so we can avoid a race to the bottom and companies can have a stronger tax base and resources to really help their people on health, on education, on infrastructure. A commitment to deal with coal-fired plants, to stop their financing. This is the largest contributor to global emissions. The G7 is coming together to do something about it. So across the board, whether it's China or anything else, we're demonstrating that democracies can actually deliver, and President Biden, I think, has done a very effective job in bringing all of our countries together in common cause."

Secretary Blinken on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace

On building democratic coalitions ahead of the Russia Summit:

"We are not coming into -- the President is not coming to this meeting with president Putin in a void. We are coming off of the G7 summit, a NATO summit, a meeting with the EU leadership and what we are demonstrating in each of these meetings and summits is that democracies can come together and work effectively to actually deliver results for our people and by the way, for people around the world, and also, we are working together militarily, economically, diplomatically, politically. We are a very powerful force. There was a major public show that across those countries, 75% of the people on average now have confidence in American leadership and in President Biden. That's up from 17% a year ago, so we are now in a position where when it comes to dealing with Russia and the challenges it poses or dealing with China and the challenges it poses, we can come with a much more united front and so I think you'll see -- again, I'm not going to get ahead of the President but when it comes to looking for action to deal with things like ransomware, we are in a stronger position with tools of our own and the international community with us to elicit that action."

On strengthening worldwide infrastructure with the Build Back Better for the World initiative:

"But one of the things that's really important, I just want to spend a second on it, one of the things the leaders agreed to was the so-called 'build back better' for the world and that is an agreement to start to pull all of our resources, our development resources, make investments in low and middle income countries, get the private sector to make these investments to build up their health care systems, infrastructure, technology, which will be a strong market for our products, but to do it in a way that's a race to the top, not the bottom in terms of the standards, in terms of respect for workers, for the environment, privacy, all of these things. That's a very powerful positive alternative to what China is doing with its so-called belt and initiative. We are demonstrating alternative vision for the future and bringing countries along."

Secretary Blinken on CBS Face the Nation with John Dickerson

On an independent investigation on the pandemic's origins:

"I think the- not only the United States, but the world is insisting on it. One of the things that's coming out of the G7 is an insistence that the WHO be able to move forward with China cooperating on this so-called Phase two report to build on the initial report, which had real problems with it, not the least of which was China's failure to cooperate. And here's the thing, John, coming out of this, we need a couple of things. We need to understand what happened. We need to get to the bottom of it. And we're working on that through the WHO. We're also working on that ourselves. The President ordered a 90-day sprint led by our intelligence community to try to get to the bottom of it. And the main purpose is to make sure that knowing what happened, why it happened, how it happened, we can put in place what's necessary to prevent it from happening again or at least to mitigate the next outbreak. China has to cooperate with that transparency, access for international experts, information sharing that has to happen. And again, I think you're seeing countries coming together to- to insist on that."

On cyber:

"One of the things the President is insisting on is a very aggressive effort, first of all, to shore up our defenses. And, and that means working very closely with the private sector, since a lot of this infrastructure is actually controlled by the private sector, not the government. It means putting in place all of the tools that we need to disrupt these ransomware networks and efforts. That requires a lot of coordination with other countries. That's exactly what we've been engaged in, including here at the- at the G7 and and now at NATO. And again, making it very clear that any country that harbors these groups, we- that's not a sustainable proposition. And we're going to need to- to take action to stop that."