Laos is a deeply Buddhist country, and my visit included a traditional Tak Bat ceremony, in which you get up at sunrise and make offerings to Buddhist monks.

Ben Rhodes

Categorized in : You Get Country Sunrise

Restricting remittances that can be sent to Cubans will directly hurt the Cuban people, this is a shameful and mean-spirited policy.

Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.

Strikes could not have ended the violence in Syria or removed all of the (chemical weapons) which was destroyed through diplomacy.

We believe the United States needs to have affirmative values that we are promoting around the world, in addition to the efforts we do to counter terrorism, we wanted to discuss not just want we're against, but what we're for.

What we want to demonstrate with this visit is a significant upgrade in the relationship between the United States and Vietnam ... even as we have areas of difference.

It will be a subject of discussion with the Vietnamese, it’s something that we obviously have been looking at … in the context of our broader relationship.

What we want to demonstrate with this visit is a significant upgrade in the relationship between the United States and Vietnam as partners on many issues even as we have significant areas of difference.

This is a new government and we’ll want to hear from them directl... by Ben Rhodes

This is a new government and we’ll want to hear from them directly what their priorities are.

We believe that now as much as ever it's important that the U.S. and Philippines are seen working together.

We created an echo chamber. by Ben Rhodes

We created an echo chamber.

The only way to truly deal with global challenges is if everybody... by Ben Rhodes

The only way to truly deal with global challenges is if everybody does their part.

We've had good support from China, but we clearly believe that there's more that will continue to have to be done, including on enforcing the sanctions we have put into place.

Russia's decision to certainly not participate at a high level we believe is a missed opportunity for Russia above all, frankly, all they're doing is isolating themselves in not participating as they have in the past.

Baseball is obviously something that the United States and the Cuban people share a common love of and it's a part of both of our heritages, and frankly, also part of the type of exchanges that we are pursuing in business, in culture, in the arts, in sports that can bring the American and Cuban people closer together.

We don’t view our steps as the types of things that would cause the Cuban government to change their political system.

This will kick off, I think, a year of significant attention on the Asia-Pacific, by bringing all of these leaders here to the United States, to Sunnylands, we could both finalize what we want to get done in this last year in office, but also send the message going forward that we do believe there should be this level of engagement with Southeast Asia.

I think this is an area where we and Congress are in the same space and agree on the need for increased sanctions.

We approach China on the basis that we have a shared interest in the principle of denuclearization and avoiding an escalation on the Korean peninsula.

It's about settling history's account and meeting our responsibility, and this president, both because of his willingness to resolve painful issues in U.S. foreign policy and his focus on southeast Asia, is uniquely suited to do that. There is the potential for this to be a truly historic visit.

We don't think escalation of tensions is in the interests of either side, what we want to see is calm and dialogue.