The biggest news President Biden made at his news conference wasn't about Ukraine.
It was his brief answer to the question: 'Are you satisfied with your team here at the White House, sir?'
Biden, to the consternation of observers in both parties, answered curtly: 'I am satisfied with the team.'
For Washington insiders, the decision to keep his current team into his second year as president is inexplicable.
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican not known for his partisanship, called on Biden to fire his chief of staff, Ron Klain, for pushing a 'guaranteed-to-fail vote' on killing the Senate filibuster that he argued as a political ploy.
'It's CYA (cover your ass) week in Washington,' Sasse told Fox News. He said the vote was held in part 'so that Ron Klain can throw some chum at the Democratic Party's progressive base.'
'Ron Klain thinks his own activists are dumb enough to fall for it.'
Sasse focused on Klain, because it's common knowledge that the 60-year-old backroom operator has unusual power in the Biden White House.
Klain first worked with Biden in 1987, when he was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee while Biden was chair and assisted Biden during his ill-fated 1988 presidential campaign. That campaign ended after Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, head of Britain's Labour Party.
Klain later served as Biden's chief of staff when he was Barack Obama's vice president.
As President Biden's chief of staff he has been dubbed 'the most influential chief of staff of recent vintage' in an admiring New York Times profile and The Master of Disaster by his critics.
Even the Times profile had to concede that 'Klain comes off as a purebred (Washington) swamp creature' who might have trouble connecting with large swaths of the country.
A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found only about a quarter of American adults were very confident that Biden 'has the mental capability to serve effectively as president' or 'is healthy enough to serve effectively as president.'
Klain (above left) first worked with Biden in 1987, when he was counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee while Biden was chair and assisted Biden during his ill-fated 1988 presidential campaign. (Pictured above) Klain serving as chief of staff to then-Vice President Joe Biden
Several Senate Democrats have privately questioned Klain's role in losing the votes of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on both the Build Back Better bill and Biden's efforts to limit the Senate filibuster, which creates a 60-vote threshold to advance bills.
Both Senators have dissed Biden on the filibuster in recent days before Wednesday's dramatic 52 to 48 Senate vote rejecting efforts to limit it.
Last week, Sinema took to the Senate floor and gave a 20-minute speech defending the filibuster just minutes before Biden came to Capitol Hill to urge a caucus of all Senate Democrats to back him on the issue.
He appeared weak and ineffectual.
This week, Manchin took to the Senate floor to defend his pro-filibuster views in the middle of Biden's first news conference in 10 months - prompting a couple of networks to diminish the President by showing both men simultaneously on a split screen.
Manchin is apparently still privately seething from last month when the White House went out of its way to attack him for his failure to support the president's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki effectively called Manchin a liar and his opposition 'a breach of his commitments to the president.'
In turn, Manchin complained to West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval that White House staff brought him to his 'wit's end' when they 'put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.'
He continued, 'Well, guess what? I'm from West Virginia. I'm not from where they're from, and they can't just beat the living crap out of people and think they'll be submissive. Period.'
Kercheval says Manchin's stance surprised him because anyone who knows his career says 'he wants a deal, he craves a deal.'
Kercheval cites Jonathan Knott, Manchin's former press secretary, as telling him 'that whoever is on the other side just needs to help Manchin get to 'yes.'
Everyone agrees that the man who messed up negotiations with Manchin so badly was Ron Klain, who managed to convert the prospect of a deal with Manchin into a burnt-out cinder.
So why won't Biden get rid of Klain and start over?
One former Democratic Senator told me that 'Under any similar situation in another White House, there would be a staff cleaning and the arrival of new advisers.'
But perhaps this is not a typical situation.
Perhaps the staff can't get fired if it's in more-or-less in charge of the boss.
That's not just idle talk.
Biden dismissed a question at his news conference from Newsmax correspondent James Rosen asking him about a Politico/Morning Consult poll that found that 49 percent of voters don't agree Biden is 'mentally fit.'
