Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is opening up like never before in her new memoir, and she’s not holding back on her feelings toward the Democratic Party. In an emotional excerpt shared by Newsweek, Jean-Pierre explained why she decided to walk away from the party she once fiercely defended — and why she now considers herself an independent.
In her book Independent, Jean-Pierre described the moment she learned that former President Joe Biden was dropping out of the race. “Biden seemed to be totally at peace with his decision, but I was stunned, my feelings a blur. I was angry and sad. I was enraged and heartbroken that this man had given more than 50 years of his life to serving the American people, and in the end, he’d been treated poorly by members of his own party. It was horrible,” she wrote, reported the New York Post.
She admitted she never saw Biden’s withdrawal coming. From the White House podium, she had spent years defending his health, energy, and mental sharpness, but said his cognitive decline ultimately cost the party dearly. “The Democratic Party had defined my life, my career,” she wrote.
“Everything I’d done to make people’s lives better had been connected to it. The party was the vehicle that allowed me not just to have a front seat to history, working first on [Barack] Obama’s presidential campaign, then in his administration, but also to make some history of my own as the first Black woman and openly queer person to ever be a White House press secretary. Never had I considered leaving the party until now.”
After Biden’s shocking announcement, Jean-Pierre said she was preparing to make her first public appearance on The View when she realized she couldn’t keep doing politics the same way. “Now the cloud of unease hovering over me solidified into an idea about how I could possibly do something different. How I could channel my disappointment into some kind of concrete action that would allow me to fight for what I believed in without giving blind loyalty to a party I felt no longer deserved it,” she wrote.
Then came her decision. “You know what? I’m going to become an independent. I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore,” she recalled.
Jean-Pierre also accused top Democrats of turning on Biden, calling it a “firing squad” that pushed him out of the race last July after intense criticism over his poor debate performance against Donald Trump. The former press secretary said she was outraged by how quickly party insiders abandoned a man she felt had devoted his life to public service.
Her decision to step away from the party isn’t just political — it’s personal. Before taking one of the most visible jobs in the White House, Jean-Pierre had spent her entire career working for Democrats, from the Obama campaign to MSNBC as a political analyst. Leaving, she said, was about reclaiming her independence and her voice.
“I had given everything to that party,” she wrote, “but somewhere along the way, it stopped standing for the things that once inspired me.”
Jean-Pierre first announced her break from the Democratic Party in June while promoting her book, which hits shelves this fall.