Senate Intel. Chair Warner: Need to Use ‘All Forms of Pressure’ on Xi over ‘Alliance’ with Putin

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said that President Joe Biden should warn China’s Xi Jinping about continuing his alliance with Russia when the two leaders talk on Friday and argued that “we need to bring all forms of pressure to bear.”

Warner said, “[O]ne thing I also hope that President Biden does tomorrow is to say to President Xi in China that if you continue this alliance, and frankly, what we have heard is that the Chinese economic advisers are concerned that this is really a Putin-Xi relationship, not a China-Russia relationship, I think we need to bring all forms of pressure to bear.”

Host Chuck Todd then asked, “Is Xi agreeing to this meeting good news in your view? Does this tell you something that he wants to take maybe a half-step away from Putin?”

Warner responded, “I don’t have direct insight on that. But we know this has been a rocky relationship. We know that the Chinese crave stability. We are going into an extraordinarily unstable period. So, I do take it as a good sign that he’s taking the call from President Biden.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett