
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.

The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.












