Huffington Post: The Key Point About Joe Biden’s National Security Picks: It’s Truly The Biden Show

By Akbar Shahid Ahmed

The outgoing president’s initial foreign policy team seemed to hardly understand the system they were taking over, much less share a vision for it. Halie Soifer, a former State Department official under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush who has also advised Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and senators close to Biden, noted the difference between the team in waiting and Trump’s relationship with his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

“They met for the first time in the interview. It’s just such an incredible contrast: Those two men did not know each other. … Rex Tillerson probably still doesn’t know what Donald Trump’s worldview is,” said Soifer, now the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “With Biden and Blinken, they’re almost family at this point. They are incredibly close. And similar things could be said about Jake Sullivan.”