ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Inside the failed White House coup to oust Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Top aides to President Biden secretly hatched a plan this past fall to replace White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre by recruiting outside allies to nudge her out the door, The Post has learned.
Jean-Pierre, who made history in May 2022 by becoming the first black and first openly gay person to hold the position, had developed the exasperating habit of reading canned answers directly from a binder to reporters at her regular briefings — offering what her superiors viewed as a less-than-compelling pitch for the 81-year-old Biden as he readied his re-election campaign.
De facto White House communications chief Anita Dunn, 66, the wife of Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer, told colleagues she had decided to call in prominent Democrats to explain to Jean-Pierre, 49, that the time was ripe to move on, sources told The Post.
“There were a number of people she asked to engage Karine,” said one source who heard of the strategy directly from Dunn, whose role as senior adviser has been filled during the past three presidencies by Jared Kushner (Donald Trump), Valerie Jarrett (Barack Obama) and Karl Rove (George W. Bush).
The source also told The Post that Dunn had claimed White House chief of staff Jeff Zients knew about and supported the cloak-and-dagger scheme to push Jean-Pierre out of the West Wing.
“There was an effort to have some outside folks who Karine knows and trusts talk to her about why leaving last fall would have made a lot of sense for her and her career,” the source said, calling it an “effort to encourage her to move along.”
It’s easy to ask the joking question, why is the left such a cesspit of racism and homophobia? But why is the Biden administration trapped in an identity politics box canyon of its own making? “Jean-Pierre is protected not by her stellar performance on the job, but by the identity boxes she checks. They can’t fire her without being eviscerated by the far left and its adherents in the mainstream press…Biden went woke instead of hiring a press secretary based on merit, and now he’s stuck with her during the most contentious presidential election campaign in history. That’s another self-inflicted wound committed in his dogged pursuit to please his left flank.”
And one more question, via our sister site, Twitchy: Will Peter Doucy ask Jean-Pierre about this story?