White House Chief Ron Klain Trashes Trump During Victory Lap: Biden Doesn’t Create ‘A Sh*tstorm Every Single Day’
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain took a victory lap over President Joe Biden‘s recent string of successes, and took some shots at former President Donald Trump for good measure.
Klain was a guest on Friday’s edition of the Politico Playbook Deep Dive podcast. Host Ryan Lizza gave Klain’s interview an auspicious intro: “The White House has a lot to brag about these days.”
Lizza is referring to a political outlook that has greatly improved over the past month or so. Biden and the Democrats scored legislative victories like the bipartisan CHIPs bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, gas prices plunged from record highs, inflation is showing signs of moderating while job growth continues to soar, and a Democratic wipeout in the fall is no longer considered a sure thing.
But a few minutes into the interview, Lizza asked Klain to volunteer something that’s poorly understood about the president. Klain responded at length about the media expectations that Trump set:
RYAN LIZZA: What is the thing about Biden that you think is the least understood either in the media, from the media, or from from the public, as someone who sees him every day and has known him for a very long time?
RON KLAIN: So I don’t think it’s true he’s out there less than his predecessors. I just think Donald Trump created an expectation of a president creating a shitstorm every single day. And that led to a cycle of cable news coverage and Twitter and so on and so forth. And I understand that made people in your line of work, you know, very busy and very productive.
I don’t think it was good for the country. I don’t think the voters wanted it. And I think 81 million of them showed up last, in 2020 and said they wanted a different kind of president. And that’s who Joe Biden is.
He comes into the Oval Office every morning. He’s serious about his work. He’s serious about the change he’s trying to bring to this country. He’s determined to deliver that change. And we’re succeeding.
And, you know, he’s not tweeting out random personal attacks on people. He’s not, you know, getting in the middle of culture wars. He’s not, you know, just stirring the pot to get on TV. And and, look, I think this is a choice the media has to make.
You know, people can continue to hold endless cable chat-a-thons about what Donald Trump had for lunch at Mar-a-Lago or what plates he threw against the wall. Or they can explain how people are going to save hundreds of dollars by taking advantage of the tax breaks and the inflation reduction act. And I think the assumption that the first of those things is more interesting to people than the second of those things could be dead wrong.
But what I know is our job is to do our jobs here at the White House in the way President Biden was elected to do his job in the White House. And then we’ll let the voters decide.
Watch above via Politico.
