Karine Jean-Pierre took over for Jen Psaki as White House press secretary just over a year ago. At the time, I figured anyone would be better than Psaki. However, it quickly became clear that despite the low bar I’d set for Jean-Pierre, she was nothing more than a diversity hire, promoted to her position because of the diversity boxes she checked off, not because of the “experience, talent and integrity needed for this difficult job” that Biden claimed she had.
The media didn’t exactly pretend this wasn’t the case, as they frequently spoke of her race, sexual orientation, gender, and immigrant status to highly the “historic nature” of someone like her taking such a prominent White House role.
Of course, it was quickly evident that she was not well-suited for the job. She was often ill-prepared for briefings, evaded questions, and notoriously relied heavily on her notes to respond to questions, sometimes providing unrelated answers. Less than two weeks into her tenure, the White House had to bring in then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby to babysit her. She’s only marginally improved, but she’s still evading questions, and Kirby is still helping her out on occasion.
Just this week, they held a joint briefing where they both infamously deflected questions about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s bribery scandal, prompting a rarely seen effort by multiple reporters in the liberal press corp to squeeze an answer out of her on an issue so damaging to Biden — a WhatsApp text conversation in which Hunter Biden threatened his Chinese business partner Henry Zhao while invoking his father’s name.
Related: Photo From Hunter Biden’s Laptop Corroborates Bribery Claims From Whistleblower
It was a sight to behold — perhaps an indication that the media might actually pay attention to Biden’s plethora of scandals. When James Rosen of Newsmax failed to get either Kirby or Jean-Pierre to answer his question, Peter Baker of The New York Times tapped in. “Can I follow up on that? So Kirby wouldn’t answer James’ question though, are you gonna answer the question? It’s not an unreasonable question to ask when the president of the United States was involved, as this message seems to suggest, in some sort of coercive conversation for business dealings by his son. Is that something? If he wasn’t, maybe you should tell us.”
Jean-Pierre went right into boilerplate, claiming that Kirby had effectively answered the question — which wasn’t true — and insisting she didn’t have anything more to share. That’s when Steven Nelson of the New York Post chimed in; then more reporters tried ever so desperately just to get an answer. While it was impressive to the media doing its job for a change, the sheer disdain Jean-Pierre displayed for the media for doing its job was loud and clear. Donald Trump often chided the media for its bias, but he routinely made himself accessible to the media and answered their questions. Jean-Pierre seemingly refused to answer the media’s efforts to get an answer because she couldn’t.
Karine Jean-Pierre has never been a great liar, and while I can imagine that trying to explain away that conversation would be difficult, again, she should have been prepared for it. I’ve seen many times a conservative network’s reporter get the runaround before she would move on to another reporter, but seeing multiple reporters united in trying to get her to provide an explanation for the incriminating text conversation showed just how easily Jean-Pierre can choke at the podium.
I have no desire to give the Biden administration advice, but it seems increasingly obvious that Jean-Pierre’s usefulness has expired.
