Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre published a new book on Tuesday.
Jean-Pierre, who served in the role for former President Biden from mid-2022 until he left office, writes in “Independent” about the shocking end to her boss’s reelection campaign, then-Vice President Harris’s unsuccessful bid for the White House, and the challenges she faced in the briefing room and behind the scenes.
The book’s title is a reference to Jean-Pierre’s shifting political identity. She no longer considers herself a Democrat — an announcement that caused a stir when it became public prior to the book’s publication.
Beyond that, here are the main takeaways.
Jean-Pierre pushes back on reports of Biden’s cognitive decline
The former press secretary is adamant she saw no evidence that Biden’s faculties were dimming — including at the disastrous TV debate with Trump that proved to be the beginning of the end.
She blames Biden’s poor performance in that encounter on a cold and travel-related fatigue.
Jean-Pierre also takes issue with “Original Sin,” the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that alleged Biden and his aides concealed his mental diminishment.
She writes that she “saw Biden every day and saw no such decline,” adding that she has no intention of reading the Tapper and Thompson book. Its central thesis “does not track with what I saw in the White House,” she reiterates.
Jean-Pierre makes plain her frustration about what happened during the turbulent weeks when Biden was pushed out of the race — including the role played by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Another notable example comes when actor and Democratic fundraiser George Clooney penned a New York Times op-ed calling on Biden to drop out.
“I read it in disbelief,” Jean-Pierre writes. “It was a gut punch.”
Inside details of the moment Biden abandons his bid
Naturally, one of the book’s most dramatic moments comes when Jean-Pierre learns Biden is abandoning his reelection bid.
On the Sunday in question, July 21, she avoided watching political talk shows in the morning because of “chatter” about whether Biden would drop out.
But when she looks at her work phone around 1p.m., she sees “an invite to an unexpected meeting happening in forty-five minutes.” Getting on the Zoom call, she is surprised to see it includes the leadership of the reelection campaign as well as White House personnel.
“And there was another name on the screen. President Joe Biden. My mind went into overdrive. My heart began to pound,” she writes.
She contends she doesn’t remember Biden’s “exact words,” but their meaning is clear. Biden’s withdrawal becomes public almost instantly.
“I was stunned, my feelings a blur,” Jean-Pierre writes, adding she was “enraged and heartbroken” by how Biden was treated by the party.
She didn’t believe Harris could win
One of the more surprising revelations of “Independent” is Jean-Pierre’s acknowledgment that she never believed Harris would win the presidency.
Her pessimism was rooted not in any disdainful view of Harris’s abilities, which she praises. Instead, the press secretary is privately unconvinced that the toxic legacies of racism and sexism can be overcome.
Jean-Pierre recalls going to bed on election night with the race slipping away from Harris and waking up to news of her defeat.
Receiving calls from “friends who were distraught or numb with disbelief,” she writes, “But I wasn’t surprised by the outcome. The truth was, I never really believed Harris could win.”
She adds: “I’d been in the body of a Black woman all my life. I’d stood at the podium in the White House briefing room, traveled in my chocolate skin through rural towns, and all my experiences of blistering stares and racist assumptions left me unable to see this country electing a president who looked like me.”
A sliver of White House intrigue
The book is far from a score-settling exercise.
Jean-Pierre’s account is very loyal to Biden and Harris — and to most other people she encounters, including former first lady Jill Biden, whom she praises as “one of my greatest sources of support.”
But the former press secretary outlines one far more challenging relationship, albeit without naming names.
She contends that in early 2024, “a key member of the White House team began orchestrating a campaign to push me out.”
The push took the shape of a steady stream of negative stories leaked to the press. According to Jean-Pierre, it was all driven by the unnamed woman who “had once been supportive of me and my career, or so it had seemed. Now she was relentlessly smearing me behind my back.”
The media leaks had been preceded by tension over the other woman’s attempt to pressure Jean-Pierre not to accompany Biden to Israel after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
More broadly, Jean-Pierre ascribes the negativity to her nemesis’s inability to control her.
“I wanted to boldly be in the room, taking up space, and claiming all the access my position entitled me to,” she writes. “And she didn’t like it.”
A blast at double standards
Jean-Pierre critiques the Democratic Party throughout “Independent,” but there is no doubt she considers Trump and the MAGA-era GOP far, far worse.
“It has become an extremist, authoritarian, right-wing movement,” she writes.
A related annoyance for the former press secretary is what she sees as media double-standards: a pattern by which Democrats — including Biden and Harris, and in other ways Jean-Pierre herself — are held to stricter standards than their Republican counterparts.
She expresses exasperation not only at coverage of Biden that she deems harsh, but also at the willingness to minimize Trump’s frequent, strange moments.
“Only a handful of journalists expressed doubts about whether [Trump], physically or mentally could make it through four more years in the White House,” she writes.
“Meanwhile, if Biden misspoke or stumbled walking up the steps, headlines flowed.”
Source: The Hill
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