Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain has said Democrats who oppose President Biden running for re-election in 2024 need a “rattling good answer” to the query of who can beat former President Donald Trump.
Klain told the Latest Yorker in an interview published Tuesday he believes the 76-year-old Trump will secure the Republican nomination and identified that Biden, 80, was in a position to accomplish what a string of other Republicans and one Democrat couldn’t.
”Donald Trump in 2016 beat every comer within the Republican Party, including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and Ted Cruz — he beat all of them, after which beat Hillary Clinton. There’s just one one that’s ever beaten Donald Trump, and his name is Joe Biden,” Klain said.
“And the individuals who have doubts about his candidacy higher have a rattling good answer for who’s going to beat Donald Trump aside from Joe Biden,” he added. “And that answer must be based on something aside from past performance, because past performance produces just one answer to that query. That’s how I see it.”
Trump announced in November that he would mount a 3rd White House run, but while Biden has said he intends to hunt a second term, he has yet to make a proper announcement.
Up to now, Trump only has one challenger.
Nikki Haley, who served because the ambassador to the United Nations in his administration, declared her 2024 candidacy Tuesday morning.
However the Republican field could get crowded, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence expected to announce their bids soon.
Klain dismissed Biden’s age and his persistently low poll numbers, saying “with age comes plenty of experience and plenty of wisdom.”
“The power to know the massive things which might be happening in international affairs and in domestic affairs, to make the appropriate judgments, to then assemble the coalition to take this war on, to balance the necessity to provision the Ukrainians and the necessity to not escalate this war to expand into other countries in Europe and to a more exacerbated conflict with Russia — that insight, that wisdom, and that have are invaluable,” he told the publication.
“And so I just think his performance as president is the last word test of his ability to be president. People can judge that for themselves.”
