❓WHAT HAPPENED: Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre released a book criticizing Democratic leadership for their treatment of former President Biden and former Vice President Harris. The Washington Post was not kind to it.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Karine Jean-Pierre, former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democratic Party leaders.
📍WHEN & WHERE: October 2025, United States.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Independent is a primer in the rhetorical tactics that have served Democrats so poorly of late, full of squishy and congratulatory therapy-speak. Jean-Pierre reports that she “protected [her] peace” by tuning out much of the 2024 Democratic convention—not a comforting admission from a public official tasked with listening to the citizenry.” – Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
🎯IMPACT: The book raises questions about the Democratic Party’s future and internal dynamics.
Former Biden White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre‘s book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, received a scathing review in The Washington Post earlier this month. Becca Rothfeld suggests Jean-Pierre “may represent the future of the Democratic Party, despite her notional disavowal of it,” but that this is not necessarily a good thing for the party, as despite “loudly declaring herself an independent in a futile effort to cleanse herself of the taint of her party,” the former press secretary is still “espousing the same old worldview in the same old tired tone.”
In her book, Jean-Pierre criticizes the Democrats for their perceived betrayal of President Joe Biden and questions their decision not to automatically support Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. However, Rothfeld noted that Jean-Pierre never answers “the rather central question of whether she was actually electable” and even confesses that she “never really believed Harris could win.”
The former press secretary is blasted as an “artifact of an age that looks recent on paper but feels prehistoric in practice—the age of pantsuits, the word ’empowerment,’ the musical Hamilton, the cheap therapeutic entreaties to ‘work on yourself’ and ‘lean in’ to various corporate abysses,” with her book written in an “outmoded register” that has been failing since 2016.
“It is incredible—and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness—that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium,” Rothfeld observes, noting how “revalingly blinkered” she comes across.
“[L]ike her colleagues in the halls of Congress, she appears to have little authentic understanding of why her erstwhile party’s approval rating has cratered,” the writer says in summation, adding that “The silver lining is that she has provided an object lesson in exactly what not to do. The question is whether the Democrats are capable of learning from her example.”
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