Karine Jean-Pierre hit with criticism over stance on Biden, Democratic Party

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s rollout this week of her new book, “Independent,” has been met with pushback from even liberal interviewers as she continued to defend former President Joe Biden while also explaining why she left the Democratic Party. 

Her argument that the party had betrayed Biden by forcing him out of the 2024 race was strongly questioned by CBS hosts Tony Dokoupil and Gayle King. Dokoupil told Jean-Pierre, “Some Americans are going to say, ‘seriously?’” Jean-Pierre has insisted, in spite of numerous contrary reports and witnesses, that she never saw anything to make her question Biden’s mental acuity.

King also pushed Jean-Pierre on Biden’s mental fitness as she said her decision to leave the Democratic Party also had to do with her frustrations about the current state of the party in standing up to the Trump administration. 

“I want to pick up on what Tony was saying because I, too, thought that,” King said. “You said, people said, why didn’t members of his inner circle speak up about what many believe was the apparent decline of Joe Biden, and you said you’re a member of the inner circle, and you never saw the decline. After that I wrote, ‘How?’ You even write, Karine, that you were on the plane with him going to the debate, and you didn’t see anything.”

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Jean-Pierre’s book took aim at the Democratic Party’s treatment of Biden and accused Democrats of betraying the former president by forcing him out of the race. She wrote that she couldn’t “stomach” being a Democrat anymore and officially left the party this year. 

Jean-Pierre said it was a “rare” trip where she didn’t see Biden even though they were on the plane together traveling to Atlanta, because his family was in tow. 

She added, “I want everybody to know that I take this question incredibly seriously, I do. I was his White House press secretary, which means I had a role that saw him practically every day and traveled with him.”

King interjected again and asked, “You saw nothing?”

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She argued that Biden and his team never denied the former president’s age and said they often poked fun at it before insisting Biden’s mental acuity was strong. 

“I saw someone who was always engaged. I saw someone who understood policy, pushed us on the policy, and also understood history,” she said. 

During an appearance on “The Bulwark” podcast, liberal host Tim Miller criticized Biden as a poor communicator and asked Jean-Pierre whether she ever spoke to him about his age.

Jean-Pierre said she never spoke to Biden about his age but argued that Biden communicated his ideas well “whether it broke through or not.”

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“He talked way less to the press than Donald Trump does,” Miller pushed back. “Way less. And he wasn’t out there at all. He wasn’t good off the cuff. He wasn’t doing press conferences. Let’s just be real. Like, he didn’t do events.”

“But Tim, that’s not true,” Jean-Pierre interrupted. “Tim, you’re conflating all of it. That’s what you’re… no, you’re… first, you’re telling me he didn’t talk well about it. Then you’re telling me he didn’t talk at all.”

Miller said Biden didn’t do either. 

Jean-Pierre maintained that Biden talked to the press a couple of times a week and suggested Miller wasn’t paying attention. 

Then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on January 3, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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The Washington Post’s Becca Rothfield offered a scathing review of Jean-Pierre’s book, calling it “outdated,” “impractical” and filled with platitudes like telling independents that they had to lean into their “own truth.”

“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,” Rothfield wrote.

“Jean-Pierre’s central complaint boils down, more or less, to a vague sense of personal grievance. The Democrats were mean to Biden, her boss; they were mean to her personally, as she outlines in a lengthy diatribe against fellow staffers who leaked unflattering information about her to Politico; and they were mean to [Kamala] Harris, whom they refused to anoint as the nominee without a fight,” she added.

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi called the book “incoherent” and Jean-Pierre herself “obtuse.” Jean-Pierre insisted in the book and in her interviews this week that the two-party system is “broken” but also doesn’t want a third party and remains aligned with Democrats.

“Jean-Pierre had over a year to think about what to say about all this, and instead of writing the book the whole world wanted, the true story (complete with photos of Biden’s used-bib collection and pictorial toilet guides) of her frustration at having to be the public face of one of the most obvious and legally perilous cons in American political history, she denied there was anything to cover up, much less that she had responsibility for it,” Taibbi wrote.

During an interview with Stephen Colbert, host of the “Late Show,” Jean-Pierre received similar pushback on the notion that the Democratic Party had betrayed the former president.

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“It was very personal for those of us who watched it too, because it was a shock to our system to see that. Because — I mean, you’re talking to a guy who helped raise $25 million for Joe Biden in March of that same year,” Colbert, an avid Biden supporter, told Jean-Pierre. “And three months later, I saw a guy who I had not seen backstage at the benefit that I did. It seemed like a dramatically different person. And at 81 years old, that’s not entirely unexpected. You can imagine why people got so worried.”

The former press secretary repeatedly insisted that she had seen Biden every day and argued he was able to govern. 

“And in a moment of great pressure on stage, we saw someone shock us and worry us. And nothing could assuage that worry. So I don’t think it was necessarily a betrayal of Joe Biden as other people saying, ‘We don’t think we were shown the Joe Biden that you saw,'” Colbert pushed back.

Stephen Colbert battled former Biden White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over the former President’s mental acuity on October 20, 2025.  (CBS/LateShow)

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Jean-Pierre did receive some positive attention, such as in an interview with former MSNBC host Joy Reid, who began the discussion by complimenting her guest’s hair. 

She was also welcomed on “The View” this week, where the co-hosts nearly all agreed with her criticisms of the Democratic Party’s treatment of Biden. Like Jean-Pierre, they all supported Kamala Harris for president.

In her book, the former press secretary wrote that she never believed Harris would win. 

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for Jean-Pierre and Biden for further comment.