Some of President Joe Biden's top aides last year were planning behind the scenes to replace Karine Jean-Pierre as White House press secretary by recruiting prominent Democrats to encourage her to resign, according to a new report that the White House is calling "wildly false."
Jean-Pierre, who became press secretary in May 2022, was the subject of grumblings from her superiors last fall. They allegedly believed she did not adequately pitch Biden as he prepared for his re-election campaign, reports The New York Post, quoting two unnamed sources.
There were also complaints that the press secretary did not understand her job and she relied too much on a binder to brief the press. Sources said that led senior advisor Anita Dunn to call on others to nudge her out.
"There were a number of people she asked to engage Karine," one source said, noting that he or she had heard the strategy directly from Dunn, a key advisor who holds the same role as Jared Kushner did when Donald Trump was president, Valerie Jarrett with Barack Obama, and Karl Rove with George W. Bush.
The unnamed source also claimed that White House chief of staff Jeff Zients knew about the scheme to push out Jean-Pierre and supported the efforts.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates strongly denied the sources' claims Friday, calling them "wildly false."
"Karine was never approached by anyone with such a message," he said. "She spends four hours preparing every day. And neither Jeff nor Anita did any such thing; both have been unflinchingly supportive of her."
But one of the sources told The Post that Jean-Pierre "had been in the job for a year and a half at that point, which is a pretty standard tenure for a press secretary in what is admittedly a very demanding job [and] Jeff and Anita [tried] to have folks that she would listen to and trust talk to her about why it might be wise to [resign]," the source said.
Another source told The Post that Zients and Dunn "were trying to find Karine a graceful exit" rather than remove her against her will and said that at least one person who was not in the administration spoke with the press secretary about stepping down.
The first source said that Jean-Pierre is not likely to leave, noting that she has been "pretty consistent in telling people from the minute she got the job that she was going to stay through the election" and would be there "come hell or high water and that’s that.”
Still, the sources say that the issues that brought about the plans remain, including Jean-Pierre's reliance on notes during her discussions with the media.
Jean-Pierre in December received but rejected an offer to become president of EMILY's List, a Democrat group that raises money for female candidates who are in support of expanded abortion rights, according to NBC News.
She then told the group that she was "committed to the president" and that she wasn't "going anywhere."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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