democracy in the u.s. and in india is in our bloodstream. he, you know, was dramatic in saying there s no space for discrimination. this contradicts your reporting and my reporting from the ground. this is what he said and declared himself committed to the question from our colleague from the wall street journal asking what steps are you willing to take to guarantee rights to people, and he declared his commitment to democracy, also of course was asked about climate, and significantly, this was the president s first opportunity to answer a question which he answered about the comments he made, the controversial comments off the cuff from comments in san francisco at a tuesday night fundraiser, when he not only said that president xi is a dictator but president biden was asked about whether this would impact and set back whatever progress had been made by secretary blinken in the meetings just the day before in
beijing. he said he was not going to change his behavior, telling what he believes to be true, and that he thought he would be moving with president xi and it would not have an impact. he did not specifically mention another part of what he had said which is even more controversial in the diplomatic and intelligence community that he said that he thought that president xi did not know about the balloon incident, that it was accidental, unintentional, he said that last week, and again in san francisco. last week at another fundraiser in the midwest, and again, saying that we are somehow aware of what was going on and president xi is thinking about all of this, well, that certainly suggested to a lot of people in diplomacy and foreign policy that he s basically telling the world we have intelligence on the decision making inside the leadership in beijing. and i will note that you said that if you have the opportunity you would ask the question about ukraine, and prime minister modi did
whether the owner took that in consideration and did it, is a different story. i wouldn t leave the dock without a way to get home and recover my equipment or in this case, people and then unfortunately now maybe wreckage. i put andrea on the spot about prime minister modi, let me put you on the spot as well too. what question would you ask at this press conference? i think the press conference is not going to answer all the questions we were asking. i think they were lost the day they were lost and if this debris field is what it is, i think the next stage is where we grieve, we get these people home, if we can recover it. we do the process that will honor them, and then we find out why. just like an faa investigation of a plane crash. there needs to be an understanding of what happened, the decision making processes, don t let this happen again. this should not reflect on the submersible industry. the industry that follows standards and rules and
whether this was safe. let me just start with a question that i ve heard from a lot of people which is could it have been found sooner? why wasn t there a ping or a tracking device on it? yes, and this is what i do, what my wife does for business. we mitigate risk. our job is to keep everybody safe, whether they re clients or equipment. and bring an $8 million robot out to scan for lost world war ii wrecks and we lose it, we have an rov on board that is bigger than me, as big as the system that was lost here to go down and find our assets. we carry it with us. we don t call for help. if i was planning this expedition, i would have known all the assets in the area that would have reached the bottom of the titanic, and reached out to them and have them in place. those counseling people to do this advising people to do this should have done that.
on democracy in his home country, and basically denied the undercurrent of the question, the implication of the question that there are real concerns about rolling back freedoms about unfair treatment of minority populations within india. but to be in this room, and to know that a democratic leader who has quite a cult of personality, quite a strong following even in the united states but does not engage with the press. for him to take a question and respond to it is clearly notable. there s a large indian press corp., moving through the room, traveling with the prime minister to capitol hill for his address to the joint session today. it was definitely a sense of history here, and certainly as journalists part of the white house press corps, there was a real sense of responsibility among our side of the room, that we were going to make certain questions were asked of the prime minister and we would see how he would respond. andrea s assessment, she gave a