Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain recounted the "blowup" the Biden administration had with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., over the social spending bill.
Klain, who left the administration after President Joe Biden's State of the Union address last week, made his comments in an interview with the New Yorker.
"Joe Manchin is in the hardest situation of any person in our caucus in the Senate," Klain said. "He is a Democratic senator from a state that Joe Biden lost by 39%. You have to start there. You have to measure how far he can go and still be viable in his home state.
"At the end of 2021, obviously, we had a blowup with him where we thought we had a deal, and he kind of thought we had violated the deal, and it was super complicated. It obviously wound up in a very bad place, and I bear some responsibility for that."
"I got frustrated with where we were, and we felt a need to take some shots at him," Klain said. "He was taking some shots at us. Nothing was too mean or too personal, but it certainly didn't help. ... He and I had our kiss-and-make-up moment."
The Washington Examiner noted that by late July, Manchin said he would support the roughly $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
"What we wanted was success," Klain told the New Yorker. "It was clear to us that the best way to get success was to have Sen. Manchin and Sen. [Chuck] Schumer work together. We worked behind the scenes to try to narrow gaps, to kind of provide solutions, technical assistance, advice.
"But credit goes to Sen. Manchin and Sen. Schumer for striking a deal. And, look, sometimes the best thing you can do as a White House is to know when you should not stick your nose in. And that, in and of itself, is part of understanding how to do this."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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