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Former Biden Chief Of Staff: Obama And Clinton Had ‘A Billion IQ Points On Donald Trump’

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A former chief of staff to two vice presidents, Al Gore and Joe Biden, said that both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had “a billion IQ points” on President Donald Trump.

Ron Klain’s comments on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” Wednesday night came during a panel conversation about Trump’s economic and trade policies.

WATCH:

Former Clinton and Obama economic advisor Gene Sperling began the conversation by accusing Trump of engaging in “economic narcissism,” a “kind of drunk driving type of economic management.”

Contending that Trump “inherited” a “solid” economy from Obama, Sperling said the president has squandered it with “reckless” trade policy.

“I agree, we should be tougher on China,” he said. “I agree, we should take some short-term hits but this kind of reckless back and forth has now been such an assault to not just the U.S. economy but the global economy that now the number one single risk factor in economics in the world is Donald Trump personally. That’s why I say economic narcissism because it is his sense of recklessness and his sense that somehow maybe if he really hurts the China economy or the German economy or the global manufacturing goes down that that’s somehow good for us. It’s not.”

O’Donnell brought Klain in by quoting Trump as saying that “trade wars are easy to win.”

“No one before Donald Trump has thought that,” said the MSNBC host. “Certainly not in the era of modern economic thought.” (RELATED: ‘This Is Shameful, Sir’ — Contentious Peter Navarro Interview With Fox News Weekend Host Goes Completely Off The Rails)

“I worked for two brilliant presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama,” said Klain. “And as brilliant as they were, they have, like, a billion IQ points on Donald Trump, there wasn’t a single meeting where their thoughts on the economy wasn’t improved by having a first-class team around them of people like Gene Sperling. And so now you have a president who’s nowhere near Barack Obama and Bill Clinton trying to manage an economic situation with a team that’s nowhere near the kind of team those two presidents had, and that is frightening.”