Blinken is told France 'expected better' in testy TV appearance as he works to repair US-France rift
CNN
Secretary of State Tony Blinken met with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and French President Emmanuel Macon in Paris Tuesday amid tensions between the two countries that — at least once in a TV interview — boiled to the surface.
A senior State Department official described Blinken's official encounters as "very productive" and forward-looking, but both the US and the French agreed that work remains to mend the relationship rocked by the Biden administration's new defense partnership with the UK and Australia.
Bitterness about that deal and the Biden administration's treatment of the French punctuated an appearance Blinken made on France 2 TV, where the interviewer raised France's anger, incomprehension and sense of betrayal -- and then got personal.
President Joe Biden asserted Friday that Hamas has been degraded to a point where it can no longer carry out the type of attack that launched the current 8-month conflict in Gaza, laying out a three-phase proposal Israel has submitted to wind down the grinding crisis as he declared, “It’s time for this war to end.