• 1 minute ago
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is asked if he trusts Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Transcript
00:00Mr. Secretary, do you trust Putin?
00:02I think it's an irrelevant question.
00:04I think in foreign policy, it's not about trusting.
00:06It's about actions, about things that you do.
00:09So in the end, on something like this,
00:11you can't just say you want peace.
00:13You have to do peace.
00:14And that's true for both sides in any conflict,
00:16so in any war or in any engagement.
00:18So I think ultimately, all these things,
00:20I would just encourage you guys, if we're
00:22going to be serious about foreign policy,
00:24to sort of navigate away from some of the,
00:26this is not a reality show.
00:28This is not about personalities.
00:29This is very simple.
00:30You either do things or you don't.
00:31There are things you are doing and things you're not doing.
00:34And that's what foreign policy is driven by.
00:36And that's how our decisions should be driven by.
00:38So unfortunately, in foreign policy,
00:41oftentimes, you will have to work with,
00:43I'm not talking about President Putin in particular.
00:45I'm talking about generally.
00:46You will have to work with people
00:48you don't like in foreign policy.
00:49And oftentimes, you will have disagreements
00:51with people you like.
00:53Sometimes, you will have to figure out
00:55how to work together with nations that are not
00:56aligned with you on most issues.
00:58And in other cases, you may find yourself
01:01unaligned on an issue with a nation
01:02that you work with very closely on a bunch of other things.
01:05That's not just now true today.
01:07That has been true throughout the history of mankind
01:10and certainly the relations between nation states.
01:13So I think it's important.
01:14I get there's this temptation to cover foreign policy the way
01:17we cover domestic policy and the way we cover other things
01:20in our society.
01:21But foreign policy about nation states
01:23pursuing what they have interpreted
01:24to be in their national interests
01:26and balancing that is what the art of diplomacy
01:29and the work of foreign policy is all about.
01:31And so we need to sort of be mature and open-eyed
01:33and realistic without losing our idealism,
01:37without losing what we hope the world will look like
01:39and want to shape it and be a part of.
01:42But by the same token, we have to make pragmatic decisions
01:44every single day.
01:45And that's not true today.
01:46That's always been true.

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