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FIRST ON FOX: Republicans have cycled through nicknames for Ron Klain, President Biden’s powerful White House chief of staff, such as “Prime Minister Klain” or “the guy behind the curtain.” But now, Republicans increasingly say, Klain deserves a new label: fired.
Klain’s key role in the Biden administration is facing special scrutiny as Biden, who has kept a remarkably low media profile, struggles to juggle a series of crises, from the economy, to foreign policy, to the surging coronavirus that Biden promised to “shut down.”
Anonymous White House officials and congressional Democrats have blamed Klain for the administration’s issues in leaks to the media.
And Klain’s prolific use of Twitter has caused headaches for the White House on repeated occasions, such as when he endorsed the idea that inflation is a “high class problem,” or when one of his retweets appeared in an appellate court ruling blocking Biden’s vaccine mandate.
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The White House’s stack of problems has given new ammunition to Klain’s critics, who say he’s a poor captain of the executive ship.
Chief of staff Ron Klain’s powerful role in the Biden White House has led Republicans to dub him the “man behind the curtain.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Despite running on an agenda of unity and promising to work with both sides, President Biden has staffed his Cabinet and most senior adviser positions with radical leftists, and the results have been disastrous for hard-working families,” House Republican Whip Steve Scalise told Fox News Digital.
“The American people deserve accountability, and the people who made the awful decisions that created these crises should be fired, starting with the chief of staff, who seems to spend more of his day on Twitter criticizing Republicans and stoking divisions rather than working to address any of the crises our country is facing,” Scalise added.
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican, last week called on Biden to fire Klain “immediately.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., agreed with Sasse, telling Fox News Digital in a Tuesday email that Biden should “immediately reconsider” his team “starting with the mastermind and long-time political operative, Ron Klain.”
“It’s clear Joe Biden isn’t running the show. He ran as a moderate, but the policies he’s advocated for as President have been outrageously far left,” Blackburn said. “If Biden’s unpopular first year in office has told us anything, it’s that he should immediately reconsider the team pushing this liberal activist agenda to federalize our elections, defund the police, pack the courts, and spend millions of dollars at the expense of the American taxpayer – starting with the mastermind and long-time political operative, Ron Klain.”
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn wants President Biden to fire his chief of staff. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The ‘Prime Minister Klain’ nickname has stuck for a reason,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Fox News Digital.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital that he believes the buck stops with Biden and that “Joe Biden has no one to blame but himself.”
“This is Joe Biden’s White House and Joe Biden’s administration,” Scott said. “We’ve seen how much the president loves to blame others, but when it comes to the total failures of this administration, like skyrocketing inflation, an open border with record illegal immigration, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and withering American strength on the world stage, Joe Biden has no one to blame but himself.”
In a Washington Post profile piece on Tuesday, Klain said the chief of staff position is a “grinding job, there’s no question about it” and added, “It takes a lot of stamina to do it. So we’ll see how long it lasts.”
Klain has been a key figure in Biden’s political orbit since the 1980s, including serving as Biden’s chief of staff in both the Senate and vice president’s office.
Biden was in the White House less than two months before South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune dubbed Klain “the guy behind the curtain.” Other Republicans use the term “Prime Minister Klain” as a nod to the chief of staff’s power within the administration.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain attends an event with governors of western states and members of the Biden administration Cabinet June 30, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
In a 2021 New York Times profile piece on Klain’s ascension to power, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is quoted saying he “probably talk[s] to him every day” and that he will call Klain when “there’s a thorny problem.” The Times described Klain as “the most influential chief of staff of recent vintage.”
Klain disagreed with people calling him “Prime Minister Klain” during an interview on the “Sway” podcast last summer, saying he sees himself as a “staff person” who is just trying to “help get the staff organized and moving in a direction where we’re helping the president be effective.” However, he did admit it was “flattering” when the host said that people often compared him to James Baker, who served as a chief of staff under two Republican presidents, adding that Baker “was also sort of called the prime minister, in a lot of ways.”
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President Biden speaks during a meeting with the White House Competition Council in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 24, 2022. ( Alex Wong/Getty Images)
A White House spokesman pointed Fox News Digital to Biden’s remarks last week, when the president said he is “satisfied with the team.”
The White House has been sensitive to questions about how much control Biden actually has over his agenda.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ office attempted to cut off an interview with TV host Charlamagne tha God after he questioned whether Biden or West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is the “real president.”
