Biden Super-Loyalist Ron Klain Stabs Him in the Back: Couldn’t Even ‘Grasp’ Trump’s Arguments at Debate
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Ron Klain, the Democratic political operative who served as President Joe Biden’s chief of staff during the first half of his term in the Oval Office, went on the record to stab his old boss in the back in a new book.
Klain told Craig Whipple, the author of the forthcoming Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History that he was unsettled by Biden’s condition before, during, and after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump last summer.
From The Guardian‘s write-up of Klain’s role in Uncharted:
According to Klain, it turned out that Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was”; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation”; and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job”.
At a post-debate meeting at Camp David, Klain thought to himself that he’d “never seen” Biden “so exhausted and out of it,” even musing that he seemed “unaware of what was happening in his own campaign.”
“That evening Biden met again with Klain and his team, [Biden aides] Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti, and Bruce Reed. ‘We sat around the table,’ said Klain. ‘[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders,’” reported Whipple, who added that Klain “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US. ‘He just became very enraptured with being the head of NATO,’ he said. That wouldn’t help him on Capitol Hill because, as Klain noted, ‘domestic political leaders don’t really care what [Emmanuel] Macron and [Olaf] Scholz think.'”
While Klain came clean to Whipple, he argued the exact opposite last summer while other Democrats were calling on Biden to get out of the race.
After liberal columnist Jonathan Chait published an article making the case for ditching Biden, Klain chided him, submitting, “I think the best way to put out the fire is having someone who has successfully defeated the threat previously,” and dismissing the “pundits” who “always bet on verbally gifted opponents.”
After Biden did eventually drop out of the race, Klain fumed online.
“Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump, it’s time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign — our outstanding @vp, @KamalaHarris!!” wrote Klain on X. “Let’s get real and win in November!”
