Karine Jean-Pierre, who served as press secretary under President Joe Biden, has opened up about her emotional turmoil during her tenure at the White House, describing feelings of both anger and heartbreak. In a candid memoir, she shares her journey to becoming an independent, breaking away from the Democratic Party’s influence.
The memoir reveals her unexpected decision to leave the party, despite having staunchly supported President Biden throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. Jean-Pierre frequently defended his capabilities from the podium in the White House Briefing Room.
The turning point came when Biden, in a Zoom call with White House officials, announced he would be withdrawing from the presidential race. This revelation left Jean-Pierre feeling deeply betrayed.
In a moving excerpt highlighted by Newsweek, Jean-Pierre recalls Biden expressing to staffers that the party had caused irreparable damage to his campaign, which left her and many others in shock.
Reflecting on the situation, Jean-Pierre writes in her book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” that she never imagined Biden would choose to step down.
‘I never thought Biden would step down,’ Jean-Pierre wrote in the book titled ‘Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.’
She continued: ‘The way the Democratic leadership was coming after him, I believed he would fight back harder.’
The then-president, however, ‘seemed to be totally at peace with his decision, but I was stunned, my feelings a blur. I was angry and sad,’ she said.
‘I was enraged and heartbroken that this man had given more than 50 years of his life to serving the American people and, in the end, he’d be treated poorly by members of his own party. It was horrible.’
Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has revealed how she was left feeling ‘enraged and heartbroken’ by her ex-boss
She recounts in her new memoir how Former President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race left her ‘enraged and heartbroken’
She noted that the ‘Democratic Party had defined my life, my career.
‘Everything I’d done to make people’s lives better had been connected to it,’ Jean-Pierre wrote.
‘The party was the vehicle that allowed me not to just have a front seat to history, working first on [Barack] Obama’s presidential campaign then in his administration, but also to make some history of my own as the first black woman and openly queer person to ever be a White House press secretary,’ wrote Jean-Pierre, who worked as a political director for Obama.
She also recounted how she ultimately made the decision to abandon the party when she appeared on The View – in her first public appearance following the bombshell news.
‘Now the cloud of unease hovering over me solidified into an idea about how I could possibly do something different. How I could channel my disappointment into some kind of concrete action that would allow me to fight for what I believed in without giving blind loyalty to a party I felt no longer deserved it,’ Jean-Pierre remembered thinking.
‘You know what? I’m going to become an independent,’ she continued. ‘I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore.’
Prior to Biden’s announcement that he was dropping out of the race on July 21, 2024, Jean-Pierre had gained flack as she repeatedly touted the president’s physical and mental acuity from the podium
Jean-Pierre’s memoir has been described as an ‘urgent, timely analysis’ with publisher Hatchette urging Americans to ‘vote their values and maintain individuality within party lines.’
But some of her former colleagues have hit out at the former press secretary, whom they accused of being a ‘grifter’ for cashing in with the book.
‘I laughed reading her book announcement that claims she “presents clear arguments and provocative evidence” when our party failed to make a compelling argument for Democrats with her as one of our most visible messenger for three years,’ one former Biden administration official told DailyMail.com.
‘Probably best to purge the party of our most delusional and self-serving personalities,’ the former official added.
Another operative told Politico it was ‘the most grift-y thing I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s saying something in Washington.’
Former White House official Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former advisor to VP Kamala Harris, also wrote on X that ‘a lot of group chats were revived today,’ with former Biden State Department spokesman Vedant Patel saying he was ‘counting 13 on my end.’
Jean-Pierre’s new memoir, which runs 256 pages, is set to go on sale on Tuesday
She has previously referenced some of the scores she planned to settle during an interview in February at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
At the time, she told how the ‘toughest thing to see’ was a ‘firing squad’ during the weeks after Biden’s debate, when party stalwarts pushed him to drop out – arguing he could not defeat Donald Trump with his lousy approval ratings.
‘I had never seen anything like it before,’ she intoned. ‘I had never seen a party do that in the way that they did. And it was hurtful and sad to see that happening – a firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot.’
Her new book, which runs 256 pages, is set to go on sale on Tuesday.
