The U.S.’s new secretary of state could be a person of Hungarian origins

Even though no official personal decisions have been made yet, newspapers guessed who President-elect Biden could possibly include in his future team. One likely candidate is Anthony Blinken, who is one of Biden’s closest advisors, and who happens to be of Hungarian origins.

According to Reuters, Tony Blinken is seen as the most “natural fit to be Biden’s national security advisor or a possible pick for secretary of state.”

A former Obama administration official said that Biden has “implicit trust in Tony.” On his recent campaign trail, Blinken was one of Biden’s closest advisors, “even on issues that went beyond foreign policy.”

This is all guesswork at this point, as a spokesman for Biden’s transition team claimed that no personnel decisions had been made yet.

Career

Blinken served as a deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 under President Barack Obama and as U.S. deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017. Blinken was also involved in the planning of the 2011 U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He worked as an advisor for Biden during his previous unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

During Biden’s early years as Barack Obama’s VP, Blinken served as his national security advisor and as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair.

Hungarian origins

Magyar Hang writes that

both Blinken’s birth mother Judith and his stepmother Vera have Hungarian origins. His father Donald was Ambassador of the United States to Budapest between 1994 and 1998.

Vera and Donald Blinken were avid supporters of the establishment of the Open Society Archives (OSA) at the Central European University in Budapest, which is named Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives after them. Unfortunately, CEU was basically forced out of Hungary by the current government and their new laws on higher education.

Source: reuters.com; hang.hu