There hasn’t been any formal announcement of this news yet and we may not see one until after the State of the Union address. But enough sources are reporting that Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s Chief of Staff
will be leaving his position in a matter of weeks. In a more “normal” administration this might not be a terribly significant development. Jobs at the White House can involve very long days without a break and can be quite stressful. People regularly resign from such positions to make room for up-and-coming prospects. And presidential chiefs-of-staff often depart before the two-year mark.
But this isn’t just “any normal administration.” It’s long been suspected by many of us that Ron Klain has actually been the person running the country for the most part while attempting to mask the President’s obvious cognitive decline. Klain signs off on every speech that Biden gives and is believed to have the last say in terms of what makes it into Joe’s teleprompter. His boss is simultaneously in the middle of a very high-profile scandal and the process of deciding about running for a second term. It just seems like an odd time for his second-in-command to bail out, doesn’t it? (NY Post)
White House chief of staff Ron Klain is expected to resign in the next few weeks, according to a report.
Klain, 61, has been telling colleagues privately that he is on his way out since the midterm elections in November,
according to a report in the New York Times on Saturday. Klain has been President Biden’s chief of staff for the past two years.
It’s not yet clear if a successor has been chosen or when Klain plans to make the formal announcement of his imminent departure, although more information is expected after next month’s State of the Union address, the newspaper reported.
Here’s one possible thing to consider while we sort through what this all means. This administration has been notoriously good at keeping things away from the public since the day Joe Biden took office. Of course, the corporate media has clearly been quite cooperative in terms of not asking any uncomfortable questions, but leaks have been few and far between. How did this news about Klain hitting the bricks make it out just as his boss is in the middle of a classified document “scandal?”
I would suggest that this development fits in with
the latest classified document “discovery” at Biden’s Delaware mansion by the FBI in a tidy fashion. Unlike the seemingly
endless flow of staffers bailing out on Kamala Harris, Biden’s staffing situation has appeared mostly stable. (With Jen Psaki being one notable exception.) Seeing Klain head to the exits at just this moment projects the image that something isn’t right inside the Oval Office. It further feeds into the impression that things aren’t going well and Uncle Joe probably shouldn’t announce that he’s running for a second term.
None of this would be happening without Klain’s approval and cooperation. For all we know, he may have cooked up the entire scenario. The timing is all simply too perfect, as if there’s a director standing backstage and whispering instructions in a very public performance. But perhaps not. At the Daily Caller, Micaela Burrow
suggests that the coming weeks and months look very rocky for Biden and maybe Klain just didn’t want to deal with the storms that are on the way.
The next chief of staff will have to shepherd the White House through the fallout of the probe over classified documents found in Biden’s private residence, as well an
onslaught of investigations coming out of a Republican-led House of Representatives, especially
pertaining to Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s business dealings.
That’s definitely a reasonable take. The new GOP majority in the House is definitely planning to make things uncomfortable for Joe Biden and bring many things to light that have thus far remained hidden. The coming investigations probably won’t be very much fun for Biden’s Chief of Staff, no matter who it winds up being. (Susan Rice and Labor Secretary Martin Walsh are both considered to be leading contenders.) But if the party really is working to edge Biden off the stage, Klain probably wouldn’t want to stick around for that either.
