Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is leaving the Democratic party, citing its "horrible" treatment of former president Biden, Breitbart reports.
During her time as Biden's top spokesperson, Jean-Pierre was often criticized for her labored and unconvincing responses to tough questions about Biden's cognitive health and other topics. She has often been accused of helping to cover up Biden's decline, which became impossible to deny after a pivotal 2024 debate that led to the dramatic unraveling of his re-election campaign, and ultimately his entire political career.
Before throwing in the towel, Biden put up spirited resistance for a few weeks, raging at Democrat "elites" who had pressured him to quit, including his own former boss, Barack Obama.
In a move that blindsided Obama and other power brokers, Biden endorsed then-vice president Kamala Harris to take his place on the 2024 presidential ticket despite concerns about her competence, and she ended up losing decisively to President Trump in the general election.
The push to ditch Biden opened up a deep and lasting wound on the left, with Biden loyalists continuing to express anger over the way the lifelong Democrat was shoved aside - as Democrats persist in blaming Biden's unrealistic re-election hopes for their present woes.
In an excerpt from her book Independent, Jean-Pierre said she was stung by the Democrats' ambush of her former boss and surprised by Biden's eventual capitulation.
“Biden seemed to be totally at peace with his decision, but I was stunned, my feelings a blur. I was angry and sad. 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 been treated poorly by members of his own party. It was horrible,” she wrote.
Jean-Pierre acknowledged that leaving the Democratic party is not easy for her, given the central importance of the party machine in her own professional rise.
"The party was the vehicle that allowed me not just to 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. Never had I considered leaving the party until now," she wrote.
With her former party's brand in the gutter, some may be led to think Jean-Pierre is making a calculated career move as she embraces a vague "independent" label. Democrats responded angrily to her book announcement in June, dismissing her pivot as an opportunistic "grift" or cash grab.
But she insists her disillusionment with Democrats is genuine.
“You know what? I’m going to become an independent. I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore,” she writes in the book.
During a discussion of her book on CBS, Jean-Pierre doubled down on her previous statements concerning Biden's mental acuity, insisting she never observed warning signs of cognitive decline.
"But when we talk about the mental acuity, and again, I take this very, very seriously, I never saw anyone who wasn’t there," she said.
