Already a subscriber?Several times each day, US President Joe Biden dials up Mike Donilon, a close adviser since the 1980s, to chew on the latest polls and headlines.
The three are at the centre of the Biden world, part of an echo chamber where dissent is rare. In important moments, each has told the president news he did not want to hear, although not one of them said no when the president was considering whether to run for a second term. They are also decades older than the young voters who could decide the election, which worries many of the president’s allies. Klain is the youngest at 62. Donilon is 65. Kaufman is 85, four years older than Biden.
Last month, Klain said he would take time off from his job as chief legal officer at Airbnb to help prepare Biden for the two debates with Trump. Several Biden advisers say that Klain is able to redirect Biden when he meanders, a prized skill when the work involves cutting the loquacious president’s remarks into debate-size sound bites.
In 2020, he devised the winning strategy for the president’s campaign against Trump: focus on the threat to democracy, he told Biden.