President Biden has a State Dept. and Sec of State in Tiny Blinken….
Right now?
The Sec of State has his hands full….
So?
President Biden has reached out to an old Delaware friend that wanted the Sec of State job but Biden couldn’t afford to give it to him….Sen. Chris Coons….
Coons won’t get the pomp and ceremony Blinken will get….
But with this reveal?
People oversea’s will know that he has the ear of the new President and that the isolationist last American President is gone…for Real…
The Biden admin has a Lot of Foreign Affairs catching up to do in different places….
Chris Coons was flying back from Ethiopia to Washington this week when a staffer showed him a revealing picture on the plane’s radar: His aircraft and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s were about to cross paths over the Atlantic Ocean.
The moment was a metaphor of sorts for Coons’ current role for President Joe Biden. The Delaware Democrat’s close friendship with Biden has already made Coons an unofficial White House envoy in the Senate, but he is now expanding his reach overseas, with the president dispatching the senator to Ethiopia over the weekend for an urgent diplomatic mission.
The move showed that despite Coons’ dashed hopes to serve as Biden’s chief diplomat, he’s emerging as what some sources called a “shadow” secretary of state for a president beset with foreign-policy challenges. He’s a senior member of the Foreign Relations Commitee, but it’s highly unusual for a senator who doesn’t chair a panel to travel internationally on the president’s behalf.
Coons rejects the idea that he is supplanting Blinken. Still, he is embracing the identity that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) described as a “force multiplier” for the president. While Blinken crisscrosses the globe to address an array of diplomatic and national-security issues, Biden can rely on Coons to pinch hit.
“The fact that I am known to have a close relationship with [Biden] helps me deliver a more forceful message,” Coons said of his weekend trip to Addis Ababa, where he met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
“President Biden thought it was important to send someone who could speak for him and deliver a message for him directly,” he added, referring to himself as Biden’s “personal emissary” on this mission.
Indeed, Coons did not hesitate to say yes when Biden asked him to make the long trek to Africa to address the atrocities in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region….
image…U.S. Senator Chris Coons (C) chats with Force Commander Major General Shehu Abdulkadir on a previous CODEL during President Obama’s administration, in Bamako, Mali, February 18, 2013.