President Biden welcomed to the Capitol the leader of the world's biggest democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

There were lavish ceremonies, a state dinner, and an address by Modi to the U.S. Congress.

The visit was aimed at drawing the US.

and India closer together strategically while also countering China's global influence.

JOE BIDEN: Challenges and opportunities facing the world require that India and the United States work and lead together, and we are.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And this comes as tensions between the U.S. and China flared up again this week when President Biden referred to President Xi Jinping as a dictator at a California fundraiser.

That was just a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken's delicate diplomatic visit to Beijing, which was the first visit by a â U.â S. secretary of state in five years.

On Thursday, Biden defended his comments.

JOE BIDEN: I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future.

I don't think it's had any real consequence.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Joining us tonight is Vivian Salama, she covers national security for The Wall Street Journal, and here with us in the studio, Mary Bruce is the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and Weijia Jiang is the senior White House correspondent for CBS News.

Welcome to all of you.

Thank you so much for being here.

Vivian, before we get to Modi and his visit, I want to talk about another breaking story that is happening tonight in Russia.

We are hearing reports out of Moscow of armored columns in the streets.

We are hearing reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, has been threatening a coup and there is an arrest out for him.

What can you tell us about what is happening in Russia right now?

VIVIAN SALAMA, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: William there are pretty extraordinary images unfolding in Moscow as we speak.

The city essentially going into lockdown after Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is the leader the Wagner Group, a very infamous mercenary group that has supported the Russian campaign in Ukraine, as well as other places like Syria and across Africa.

Gradually, we've seen a feud developing between Prigozhin and the Russian military as far as how the campaign in Ukraine has been going.

And while he's considered widely to be a very close Putin ally, he has been critical of the way this military, this war has been going, saying that losses have been severe and that the management from the military has been awful.

And he's called them out for months now.

And so today, he went on a video live and said that, essentially, he was targeted, his men were targeted by the Russian military.

And he said he was essentially going to fight back.

He's claimed now that he's making his way toward Moscow and so the military has come out and said that he is planning an armed rebellion, essentially a coup.

And so what is essentially happening here is that we are seeing cracks in the seemingly impenetrable facade that the Russian government has portrayed up until now with regard to support and the backing on its campaign in Ukraine, where you have this very influential figure coming out and calling them out on severe losses and severe mismanagement of this.

And so, obviously, still unfolding, but something we have to watch very closely.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: indeed.

Vivian, thanks for that update.

Let's pivot back to the events here this week.

Mary, Narendra Modi's visit, this was just the third official visit that President Biden has had.

remind us of the importance of how this visit unfolded here this week.

MARY BRUCE, Chief White House Correspondent, ABC News: It was pretty remarkable.

It was only the third state visit and we did see the White House do the full pomp and circumstance.

You had thousands of people on the south lawn, a full lavish state dinner.

And, of course, it was not without controversy.

As you mentioned, Modi is someone who prides himself as being a leader of this huge democratic superpower.

And yet it comes at a time when we, of course, have seen a lot of those basic democratic rights eroding in his country.

You are seeing a backslide when it comes to freedom of the press, religious, political freedom.

And so this White House took a lot of heat for meeting with Modi.

And yet it's a balancing act that we have certainly seen presidents do in the past where they want to shore up a relationship with a country, with a controversial leader.

The president saying -- he said he was going to bring up human rights issues.

He addressed a question about it during that press availability.

But what struck me sitting in the east room, watching them field questions was the history of the moment, because we actually saw Modi do something he has never done in his nine-year tenure, and that is to take a live question from a reporter, something that perhaps all of us take for granted.

Even this conversation is something that would be remarkable to many.

And to see the look on the faces of the Indian reporters was pretty wild.

And it also reminded me in the moment of the power of the White House to force essentially Modi into that situation.

He didn't have to do that.

And yet this president, this administration, felt that it was important that they put him into a situation where he would have to take a question.

Whether he would actually answer it was another issue.

And because they knew it was going to be a question about this very issue about human rights, it certainly gave the Biden administration a chance to make it appear that they were tackling that issue.

Am I of any assumption that Modi is going to change his ways because he fielded a question?

Certainly not, but it showed the power of the White House to stand up for those very democratic values that here are at stake.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Weijia, the White House seemed eager to downplay these issues that Mary is talking about of Modi's human rights record, arguing that this is a strategic relationship that we care a great deal about, and the subtext being we care about India and their ability to help counter China.

Help us understand how that might actually work.

What are the things that India could do to be a buffer against China for the U.S.?

WEIJIA JIANG, Senior White House Correspondent, CBS News: So, everything at the center of the president's foreign policy is China and continuing the effort to isolate China, especially when it comes to the economy and when it comes to U.S. dependence on China.

And that is why this relationship is so important to the White House.

And even though the president reiterated himself that they talked about human rights and democratic values behind closed doors, it's incredibly important to set the stage, as Beijing is watching, to show that we are moving away from our need for you, for things when it comes to technology, when it comes to semiconductors.

In fact, they just announced a massive deal today at the White House to invest millions and millions of dollars into India so that the U.S. wouldn't rely so much on China for this.

And so that is one way.

They also have formed a quad relationship with not only India, but Australia as well, and the U.S. and being in the region.

I think that everything strategically at this moment is to prepare for China's nonstop goal of trying to become the superpower with a capital T. And so, despite all of these issues that Mary just brought up, this was incredibly important for the president to roll out the red carpet to show that the U.S. is invested in not only nurturing but building this relationship even more.

CARL HULSE, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: I would say there's some real domestic political considerations here, too.

The Indian-American voting bloc is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing voting bloc in the country.

And you see many more Indian-American politicians.

You see it in the Republican primary, you see it in Congress, in the House, when you look out on the floor now.

So, both parties are maneuvering here.

I think the general sense is that that bloc was more favorable to Democrats and to Biden in the last election.

So, there's a lot going on domestically at the same time this international intrigue is.

But I got to agree with Mary.

Presidents have made their careers pushing these considerations into the background when there's a serious strategic advantage.

And I think in his speech to the House and to the joint meeting of Congress, he sort of cleared the bar that he had to clear, but it was minimal.

I mean, there wasn't this enthusiasm that I've seen for other speakers, and they were filling seats with pages and other staff, although it was horribly scheduled on a Thursday afternoon, because most people leave Congress on Thursday.

WEIJIA JIANG: And to your point, today the White House was asked whether President Biden was satisfied with the prime minister's remarks and response to those questions about human rights and democracy, and the answer was, he was satisfied with the opportunity to talk to him about it.

So, it was couched in the way you would expect.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Vivian, can I ask you about this, the other issue relating to China, which is President Biden being overheard calling Xi Jinping a dictator.

I mean, on one level, that is a classic gaffe in that it is terribly timed.

On the other hand, President Xi also does fit most traditional definitions of a dictator.

President Biden seems to think that this is not that big of a deal and this will all blow over.

Is that your sense?

Do you think the Chinese will really take an affront to this?

VIVIAN SALAMA: Whether or not they take an affront to it, they know that they can't afford to make it into a big deal.

And we saw that this week because President Biden's comments, remember, came just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leaving Beijing for this very high-stakes trip, which was postponed from February after the balloon incident, the spy balloon incident.

And so they finally made it happen, and both sides emphasized how keen they were to get over their differences and try to find some common understanding because they knew the stakes were so high.

And so these unscripted remarks that came from President Biden just on the heels of that visit were worrisome, caught a lot of people in the administration off guard who had been working to kind of rebuild the ties and the communication between Beijing and Washington.

But what they tried to do is downplay it on both sides.

The very interesting thing that happened immediately after President Biden made those comments is that there was a demarche, an official summoning of the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador, Nicholas Burns, to Beijing, and he was essentially reprimanded.

They gave him a good finger wagging.

But, usually, Chinese state media would advertise something like this.

They would parade it around, and they would celebrate when there's a demarche.

And this time, there wasn't a single mention of it because they did not want, A, to draw attention to the fact that anyone, let alone the president of the United States was referring to their president as a dictator, but, B, also, they're very keen on just building from that momentum from Secretary Blinken's trip and having some productive outcome come out of it.

And so that's where we stand right now.

And so the White House, when they keep on saying there's no fallout, that's their hope.

And so far, it seems that Beijing is on the same page.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right.

Vivian Salama, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your reporting.