Just when the Democrats may have thought the deep dives into what went wrong in the Biden administration were dying down, former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced her forthcoming book about, at least in part, the weeks that led up to Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 election.
Perhaps to drum up interest, KJP’s publisher teased that she no longer considers herself a Democrat and is going to shine a light on the “broken” Biden White House.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine, hosts of 2Way’s Morning Meeting, to discuss the announcement and why Jean-Pierre will likely be hard pressed to find an audience who cares what she has to say.
The Tease
In what is being billed by Hachette Book Group (i.e. Jean-Pierre’s publisher) as “a groundbreaking, revelatory assessment of America’s broken two-party system,” the former press secretary apparently forgoes her Democrat affiliation in Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.
Hachette claims Jean-Pierre will deliver a “hard-hitting yet hopeful critique” in the tome due out October 21 that “takes us 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.”
Having “served two American presidents, [Barack] Obama and Biden,” KJP is apparently the ideal messenger because she is “a history maker, veteran public servant, political analyst, and independent thinker” who “defines what it means to be part of the growing percentage of our fractured electorate that is Independent.”
KJP’s Take
Just after the news broke, Jean-Pierre took to Instagram to post a video that serves as a word-salad adaptation of the Hachette tease. For the record, she also limited the ability for people to comment on post.
“Serving as White House press secretary was an honor and a privilege, but, since I have left, the people that come up to me, strangers that come up to me just across the country as I’m traveling and sometimes right in my neighborhood, at a grocery store, supermarket, airport, my daughter’s school, the number one question they ask me is, ‘Karine, how do we get out of this? How do we protect our democracy? How do we protect vulnerable communities among us? What do we do next? Because we don’t have answers here,'” she claimed. “That’s what they ask me, and this is my answer.”
Jean-Pierre then suggested she has left the Dems behind. “In an era of misinformation, disinformation, the regressiveness of social policy, what we’re seeing currently, right now, what I have decided to do – and I really have thought long and hard about this – is to follow my own compass. And that’s what I’ve done. And that’s what this book does,” she continued. “And here’s the truth, and here’s how I will lay it out to you: I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes and not be so partisan.”
She went on to say that she is looking to build a coalition “moving forward in this space that we’re in right now” (whatever that means). “If you are willing to stand side by side with me, regardless of… how you identify politically, and as long as you respect the community that I belong to and vulnerable communities that I respect, I will be there with you… I will move forward with you,” Jean-Pierre said. “And that is, I think, so important.”
That two-minute word scramble proved to be the windup for this elevator pitch: “So, this book, Independent, it’s about looking outside of boxes, not just always being in a partisan stance, and how do we move forward together in a compassionate way, in a way that really, truly cares about people,” she concluded.
Who Cares?
A former Democrat advisor, Turrentine said the messaging in the Instagram post sounds a lot like someone gearing up to run for office. And while Megyn shuttered at the thought of that, she and the guys agreed Jean-Pierre is going to have to find an audience that even wants to hear from her first.
“You have had press secretaries… who are smart people… who are not… utter morons who are just out there as mouthpieces… but Karine Jean-Pierre is not on the list,” Megyn noted. “Karine Jean-Pierre is a total moron. You only need to have watched her for two days to pick that up… so there is literally nobody in the country who wants to hear her political analysis on anything.”
Spicer is a former White House press secretary who went on to pen some books, and he wondered if this was pitched as chance for KJP to rebrand herself. “[I’m sure] the pitch went something like, ‘All right, if Jake Tapper can sell a book about the original sin, then why can’t I be independent,'” he joked. “I think that’s how that went down, just to be clear, because there is no way that anybody thinks she is any of those things.”
Given publishing schedules, Halperin surmised that Jean-Pierre has been working on the book for quite some time and believes it will mostly be about settling scores. “Color me curious about her insider details. I’m less interested in her view of what it means to be an independent,” he said. “I know for a fact that there are lots of people in the White House who will be worried about this because they recognized it was a mistake to give her the job. They tried to work around it… There are people who did not treat her great, and I suspect there may well be a correlation between who comes off poorly in the book and who didn’t give her the respect she thought she deserved.”
While no one expects the book to be hit or even perform passably well, Turrentine said it could still prove to be a headache for Democrats. “Just when I was hoping maybe we wouldn’t have to talk about Joe Biden in the fall, now I think we’re going to be talking again about Joe Biden in the fall,” he said. “Obviously, she is going to talk about those three weeks, and what they were doing, but… I’m going to be very curious which direction she goes.”
“And of course, this is just going to bring it back to the center as the party heads into the midterms and tries to move past the debacle of Joe Biden,” he continued. “[We are going to] have to relitigate what was going on inside.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Halperin, Spicer, and Turrentine by tuning in to episode 1,086 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.