Tony Blinken, Joe Biden's pick to head the Department of State, is expected to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday.
CNN reported that Blinken's meeting with Pompeo will come as the nominee tours the State Department. The meeting is scheduled to last just 15 minutes. According to CNN, it will be one of the first high-level face-to-face meetings between a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet and a Biden nominee.
"It is a good thing that the Pompeo meeting is expected to happen this week, but Blinken was not waiting around," said a source familiar with the transition. "He couldn't. The Biden team didn't know if Pompeo would even agree to meet Blinken, and they thought he may do it in the eleventh hour if he did it at all."
Pompeo had said on Nov. 10 that once every "legal" vote was counted, it would lead to a "second Trump administration."
But hours later, he appeared to soften his tone and said: "I am very confident that we will have a good transition, that we will make sure that whoever is in office on noon on Jan. 20 has all the tools readily available so we don't skip a beat with the capacity to keep Americans safe."
Blinken graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School. He served as deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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