Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary who served under President Joe Biden, has announced her departure from the Democratic Party, declaring herself an independent. Image: Yahoo News.
(The Post News)– Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House press secretary to President Joe Biden, has severed her ties to the Democratic Party and announced that she now is an independent.
The announcement comes ahead of the release of her forthcoming memoir, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, which is due out this October.
The book, by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, promises a gritty, behind-the-scenes history of the explosive final weeks of Biden’s 2024 campaign and the increasing internal mutiny that eventually led the president to withdraw from the race. Jean-Pierre, a veteran Democratic operative and former Obama administration staffer and Biden-Harris 2020 campaign worker, is reported to recount what the publisher characterizes as “the betrayal by the Democratic Party that prompted his resignation.”
Jean-Pierre’s break with the Democratic establishment represents a significant political moment, especially coming from her background as the first Black woman and openly LGBTQ+ person to serve as White House press secretary. In promotional material for her memoir, Jean-Pierre frames her resignation as part of a larger call to Americans to shed partisan allegiances.
“It is time to break free from boxes,” Jean-Pierre wrote in a recent Instagram post. She added that challenges cannot be addressed while remaining connected to red or blue—it is time to be courageous and independent.
Her exit triggers the existing reckoning within Democratic ranks following Biden’s pull-out from the 2024 election. The president, then the oldest ever to have been in the U.S. office, was growing under mounting pressure regarding his health and mental acuity. His pull-out came after a widely panned debate performance against Donald Trump, where he appeared fatigued and disoriented.
Biden’s office subsequently confirmed that he had been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had spread to his bones—a news release that heightened scrutiny of the inner circle and their attempts at downplaying or covering up his condition. Jean-Pierre, previously tasked with answering tough questions regarding the health of the president, was said to have come into conflict with both the press corps and party insiders while this was going on.
During a February panel discussion at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, Jean-Pierre described the Democratic backlash to Biden’s debate performance as a “firing squad,” criticizing the speed and hostility with which party leaders snapped at the president. “I’d never seen anything like that before,” she said. “It was really, really sad. And I think it hurt us more than people knew.”.
Since leaving the White House back in January, Jean-Pierre has maintained a relatively low profile until today. Authoring for Independent, she appears ready to be back in the political thick of things with a warning to disillusioned voters. The publisher describes the book as a “hard-hitting yet hopeful critique” of modern American politics and a call to “step beyond party lines to save our democracy.” Her flip is part of a broader national trend. In the latest Gallup survey, 43% of Americans describe themselves as independents—nearly two times the 28% who say they are Democrats or Republicans.
Speaking in an interview with CNN, Jean-Pierre reflected on her new path. “Until January 20, I was responsible for speaking on behalf of the President of the United States.”. At noon today, I became a private citizen who, like all Americans and a lot of our friends around the globe, had to contend with what was to be the future for our country. We have to be clear-eyed and inquiring, rather than blindingly loyal and obedient as perhaps we once were.
Jean-Pierre’s memoir will give an unvarnished, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the Biden administration’s tumultuous final chapter—one that could rewrite how the public thinks about the last days of his presidency, and perhaps even jeopardize the future of the Democratic Party itself.
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