Is the Biden administration trying to oust out Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre?

A bevy of White House staffers has reportedly confirmed that the Biden administration has been trying to convince out White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to step down from her position – and that she has refused to do so.

According to a report in the New York Post, unnamed staffers say White House leadership has had enough of Jean-Pierre reading pre-written answers from a binder in response to reporter’s questions and that she essentially is not exuding the charisma needed to promote President Joe Biden’s accomplishments heading into election season.

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Sources also accused Jean-Pierre of not being knowledgeable enough about the issues and failing to spend an adequate amount of time preparing for each briefing. They said White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, along with senior adviser to the president Anita Dunn, have supported the mission to oust Jean-Pierre. In a statement to the Post, Zients did not explicitly confirm or deny the claims but did express the White House’s support for Jean-Pierre.

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“The president and everyone in the White House deeply values Karine — she is an incredibly talented communicator and trusted advisor who keeps a cool head in any crisis and always has your back,” Zients said. “We are lucky to have her on the core team advancing the president’s historic agenda every day.”

White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates vehemently denied the claims that Jean-Pierre is not wanted.

“Not only are these claims wildly false, but the reality is the polar opposite,” Bates said. “Karine was never approached by anyone with such a message. She spends four hours preparing every day. And neither Jeff nor Anita did any such thing; both have been unflinchingly supportive of her. Every press secretary uses the binder. Why is she being singled out?”

Many Democrats who spoke with the Post said they had not heard about a plot to replace Jean-Pierre, but many others said they had.

Those who say there is a mission to get rid of Jean-Pierre claim the Biden administration does not want to force her out due to the optics and that Dunn and Zients were trying to find her “a graceful exit.” But Jean-Pierre has allegedly resolved to stay on through the election, as evidenced by NBC’s February 2024 report on her decision to turn down an offer to run the prominent progressive organization Emily’s List, saying she was “committed to the president” and “not going anywhere.”

Sources did not express certainty about Biden’s thoughts about Jean-Pierre, though they confirmed Jean-Pierre believes he wants her to stay on. One source said Biden relies on his senior advisers to manage the team and make these kinds of decisions.

Another layer of the story involves National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who has become a co-briefer with Jean-Pierre as an expert on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Kirby has previously served as Pentagon press secretary and has reportedly expressed interest in Jean-Pierre’s job.

In January, Axios reported that Kirby and Jean-Pierre have a tense relationship due to their alleged power struggle. White House sources disagreed on whether this was true.

This is also not the first report of folks at the White House feeling frustration with Jean-Pierre. In January 2023, the Post published another story alleging that the White House press corp was “fed up with Karine Jean-Pierre’s stonewalling about the classified documents scandal that has enveloped the Biden administration, with some reporters calling the press secretary’s regular briefings a ‘painful waste of time.'”

One source told CNN at the time she was one of “the least effective” press secretaries “of the television era.”

On Monday, anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) decided to weigh in on the situation by writing on X that “it’s not the messenger that sucks, it’s the message.”

“And, in Karine’s case,” she added, “the messenger is pretty awful too.”

Reports are that Biden aides are trying to get rid of Karine Jean Pierre.

It’s not the messenger that sucks, it’s the message.

And, in Karine’s case, the messenger is pretty awful too.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) April 29, 2024

The right has long spewed vitriol at Jean-Pierre, with many commentators and lawmakers claiming she was only hired due to her marginalized identities rather than her years of experience in politics.

When her promotion to White House press secretary was made public, Tucker Carlson raged that she was unqualified for the job, claiming that she was hired for being Black and gay. He also accused her of being “furious” at America because, as a Black woman, she is willing to call out racism when she needs to.

In July, the conservative owner of a Tennessee radio station defended racist comments he made about out her, and last March, a reporter went on Fox News and made a lewd joke about her after she lectured him at a press briefing for causing disruptions. In 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)  claimed in a webcast that Jean-Pierre couldn’t understand the baby formula shortage because she’s “married to a woman” and “doesn’t have children,” though she actually does have a daughter. In May 2022, gay white conservative podcaster Dave Rubin mocked her for being “a Black lesbo” and said that’s the only reason she got the job.

This past November, anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) introduced an amendment to lower her salary to $1 due to her long record of “lies.” Many of the examples Tenney produced, though, weren’t lies, and others weren’t even falsifiable statements that could be true or false.

In 2022, Jean-Pierre made history when she became both the first Black and first out LGBTQ+ person to serve as White House press secretary. In 2021, she also became the first gay woman to lead a White House press briefing when she was deputy press secretary.

In 2020, she served as Kamala Harris’s campaign chief of staff, making her the first Black person to serve as chief of staff to a vice-presidential candidate and one of the highest-ranking LGBTQ+ people in the Biden-Harris campaign.

During Obama’s first term, she worked in the White House Office of Political Affairs. Outside of her work with political campaigns and the government, she was the national spokesperson for the progressive organization MoveOn in 2016, a commentator for NBC News and MSNBC, and a lecturer at Columbia University.

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