What Is Karine Jean-Pierre Thinking?

For White House press secretaries, life after the briefing room follows a well-worn path. Typically this includes a book about their time in the job, a role as a cable news talking head (with the possibility of one day landing in the anchor’s seat), or a lucrative position as a spokesperson for a soulless mega-corporation. Donald Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, wrote a book called The Briefing and now pops up in various podcasts defending his former boss. Barack Obama’s press secretaries, Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney, work for David Zaslav’s Warner Brothers Discovery and Airbnb, respectively. Joe Biden’s first press secretary, Jen Psaki, wrote Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World and is now a primetime anchor at MSNBC. Dana Perino and Kayleigh McEnany are at Fox News, where Karoline Leavitt will undoubtedly join them one day. They all leveraged their experiences in the White House for plum gigs in the media-communications business.

Then there’s Karine Jean-Pierre, who also worked for Biden. On Wednesday, she announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent with the launch of a book called Independent. The book’s subtitle—A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines—teases a tell-all that doubles as a political conversion story. “Jean-Pierre didn’t come to her decision to be an Independent lightly,” the publisher writes in the promotional materials for the book, which promises to take readers “through the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision.”

The response from Jean-Pierre’s former colleagues has been vicious. They have, mostly anonymously, called her incompetent, greedy, cynical, and worse. “She didn’t know how to manage a team, didn’t know how to shape or deliver a message, and often created more problems than she solved,” a former White House official told Axios. “It’s difficult to see how this is anything but a bizarre cash grab,” another former official added. Tim Wu, a member of Biden’s National Economic Council, said “the real problem with Karine Jean-Pierre was that she was kinda dumb,” in a post on X that has since been deleted.

All that may be true. But Jean-Pierre’s choice to brand herself as an independent, with a book cover that blares the word “independent” like a sandwich board, is perhaps indicative of a small but growing trend among media types who believe that there’s a market for commentators strenuously unaffiliated with either party. After all, there’s no brand in the world more toxic right now than that of the Democratic Party. And the other side isn’t doing much better, with Elon Musk this week calling for the establishment of a third party amidst his bitter break-up with Trump.

There are many people I would be interested to hear their take on how we get out of this. Karine Jean-Pierre is not one. pic.twitter.com/IkzNMoxm9Q

— MM  (@adgirlMM) June 4, 2025

Jean-Pierre at first was seemingly on track to follow her predecessors. She was originally hoping for a post-White House job as a co-host on The View, according to Politico. After no such gig materialized, she apparently pivoted. “In a hard-hitting yet hopeful critique, Jean-Pierre defines what it means to be part of the growing percentage of our fractured electorate that is Independent,” the publisher writes, and “urges Americans to think outside of the blue-and-red box as we consider what’s next to save our democracy.”

It’s a strange move considering Jean-Pierre was, for more than two years, the face of the “broken” White House she is now trying to distance herself from, accused by conservatives of covering up Biden’s deteriorating mental and physical health. “She understands that the Democratic Party’s brand is so bad that there’s some cache to being an independent right now,” one Democratic strategist told me. “But the thing is she became an independent not because of how horrified she was by people propping up the barely coherent Joe Biden, but because she thinks people were too mean to Joe Biden and pushed him out unfairly. That doesn’t make any sense.” As one wag on X put it, Jean-Pierre “really saw Jake Tapper sell 50k books and thought ‘hey I could sell a twelfth of that.’”

Some media commentators flogging the independent brand include former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, former Puck correspondent Tara Palmeri, and Chris Cillizza, who was let go from CNN in 2022 and now writes a Substack. “I am now off on my own — calling balls and strikes no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing,” his bio on X reads. There is of course a difference between independent journalists (who should also be distinguished from plain old neutral journalists) and those who tout a certain “pox on both houses” strain of politics. “I was not coming out as a political person when I said I was an independent journalist,” said Palmeri, who has done stints at various publications including Politico. “I was coming out as independent of an institution.” But there is also obvious overlap between the two at a time when the media is sorted into partisan camps, sometimes literally so in cable news roundtables. (Palmeri said she may be “technically a registered independent but I don’t go to their conventions or believe I’m a part of that party.”)

Whether the audience of independents is all that big remains to be seen, especially since even self-identified independents tend to be nearly as partisan as self-identified Democrats and Republicans. “I know people are saying it’s a money grab, but if she wanted to make money, I feel like she could probably come up with something better than this,” said a former Biden official who worked with Jean-Pierre. “I don’t understand what she’s going for or what she’s trying to do. She just pissed off a lot of Democrats, and it’s not like Republicans liked her, and it’s not like the pool of independents is big enough for her to even have a loyal audience.” Or as one talent executive told me: “The people who are independent are the people who have no other options.”