Ep. 376 — Ron Klain
The Axe Files with David Axelrod
CNN
4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ron Klain is the former Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden and served as the Ebola Response Coordinator in 2014 under President Obama. He joins David to talk about the COVID-19 crisis: relevant lessons he learned from managing the Ebola epidemic, his assessment of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, and what we can do to mitigate the coronavirus’ long-term impact. He also shares his take on the 2020 campaign and why he believes his longtime boss, Joe Biden – whose campaign he is advising – is uniquely equipped to handle the politics of the moment.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Music |
| 0:06.0 | And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axfiles with |
| 0:12.5 | your host, David Axelrod. |
| 0:16.2 | Epidemics are no stranger to my friend Ron Claim nor his presidential politics. |
| 0:23.6 | We did an Axfiles a while back that you can find online, tracing his journey from Indian |
| 0:28.7 | apolis to Capitol Hill to the White House where he served as Chief of Staff for not one, |
| 0:33.8 | but two Vice Presidents. |
| 0:35.4 | But I sat down with Claim again last week to tap the lessons he learned as the Ebola's |
| 0:40.1 | are for President Obama during that outbreak in 2004 and to chat about Joe Biden. |
| 0:46.2 | The man he served as Chief of Staff in the White House and the man he serves today as a |
| 0:49.9 | strategist and debate coach. |
| 0:51.7 | Here's that conversation. |
| 1:00.4 | Ron Claim, it's great to be with you in keeping with the times we're not sitting across |
| 1:05.0 | the table from each other as I normally do. |
| 1:07.2 | And as we did the last time that we sat down for the Axfiles, but it seemed like a propitious |
| 1:12.5 | time to speak because of the reason that we're not sitting across the table with each other. |
| 1:17.3 | And that is of course the coronavirus and your name has come up quite a bit in these |
| 1:21.8 | discussions. |
| 1:22.8 | There are a couple of things I want to talk to you about now that you've been involved |
| 1:25.3 | in and that you're doing. |
| 1:27.2 | One is the fight against the virus which reflects your Ebola experience. |
| 1:30.5 | The other is the Biden campaign in which you are deeply involved. |
... |
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