Last week, Vogue put out a particularly glowing puff piece on White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. "White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Has Made History—And Waves," read the September 7 headline, in case you still haven't gotten that memo, something Jean-Pierre herself has reminded us of all many times before. The profile is for the October issue which will be available in stores on September 19.
Jean-Pierre has bragged about how President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden regard her as "beyond capable." She's even promoted herself as someone who is a "historic figure" who "cannot fail."
This Vogue piece mentions a bit of Jean-Pierre's history in politics, which at least perhaps provides some insight on how she got her job in the current administration, other than yet another reminder about how she's "the first Black person and first openly gay person to hold the position."
That historic nature of Jean-Pierre addressed more in depth further in the piece:
Jean-Pierre reminds me that she’s not speaking for herself at the podium. That’s as true when questions about Hunter arise as it is when she has to respond to geopolitical human rights issues that target LGBTQ+ communities. She cites Haiti’s descent into political chaos as an example of where she must hold her feelings back. It’s “one of the issues that’s toughest for me,” she says.
She knows that what she represents is part of why Biden chose her for this role. But letting her own opinions slip into the record “is not what I signed up for,” she says. “I signed up to speak on behalf of this president. That’s why he selected me.”
Also worth highlighting is Jean-Pierre's incompetence, which includes her habit of unsatisfactory and non-answers that don't pertain to the topic at hand, passing questions along to other departments or agencies, her testy attitude on a range of issues, and/or putting out the spin to claim they're handling things better than Republicans. Let's also not forget that the White House has been shutting out reporters.
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In July, Media Research Analysts (MRC) put out an analysis pointing to just how bad the press secretary has been. MRC analysts had looked at the transcripts of Jean-Pierre's briefings between January 1 and June 30, 2023, specifically to do with how she handled questions facing the president's scandals, "specifically, the corruption allegations being investigated by House committees, and his mishandling of classified documents from his time as Vice President." As the analysis noted, while reporters asked Jean-Pierre 252 questions about either of these topics, only six received a definitive answer."
That's not quite the angle that Vogue goes for, though:
That quality of directness—blunt, with a touch of compassion—is Jean-Pierre’s currency at the briefing podium. She meets the White House press corps almost daily—favoring bright colors and bold eye shadow when she does—and, while she’s more reserved than some of her predecessors and less likely to respond to provocation with a social media–ready retort, she has sharpened her own technique: disarm with a smile, then lay out the facts at hand.
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These days, Jean-Pierre wakes up around 5 a.m. Her emails to me have pre-sunrise timestamps. “I’m not disciplined at all,” Jean-Pierre says. About balance, she means. She’s quite disciplined about work, from which she allows few distractions.
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Together with aides, Jean-Pierre takes stock of the latest economic signals, the status of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, and reports of extreme heat across the country—all with an eye toward fielding questions later that day. Some in the press corps have complained that Jean-Pierre reads too much from her binder—that she sounds rehearsed. That is because she rehearses. In prep, she chooses adjectives and verbs with fastidious care. Is defend the right word to describe Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s stance on education standards that seem to celebrate the skills that enslaved people learned in bondage? Or perhaps it’s more accurate—and more pointed—to put it like this: It demonstrates a lack of leadership. It’s an insult.
The team has drafted a statement on the issue, if Jean-Pierre is open to it. Like all updates to her binder, it is printed and hole-punched. (She dreams of a briefing iPad.) No office in America relies on hole punchers like this one does. In the event of a national confetti shortage, White House hole punchers can be requisitioned to release strategic reserves.
A lot of the piece is mundane, and the kind of angle one will likely never see when it comes to accomplished Republican women such as First Lady Melania Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as a press secretary for the Trump administration and is now governor of Arkansas.
The Hill covered the profile piece from the angle of how the president asked her to come on as press secretary, something Jean-Pierre said "happened fast," with them only having "20 seconds together."
Many other coverage of the puff piece has been ruthless, though, including from the New York Post, Fox News, NewsBusters, and Nick Arama at our sister site of RedState.
That article from the New York Post included mention of some less than thrilled White House reporters. Another section of the Vogue profile curiously quoted Jean-Pierre as saying "I take none of it personally" when her credibility is attacked. "I’m representing the president, so petty is just not on the menu."
As the New York Post piece mentioned about such a line from Jean-Pierre, though:
The high-fashion shots were accompanied by a profile declaring that Jean-Pierre has “sharpened her own technique: disarm with a smile, then lay out the facts at hand.”
“I’m representing the president, so petty is just not on the menu,” she is quoted saying.
But that “disarming smile” is seen nowhere in the glamour shots.
Instead, her expressions are more akin to a scowl – an expression the White House press corps has seen just as often.
“It’s sad that a magazine that purports to be practicing journalism is profiling a press secretary that’s gone out of her way to deliberately silence members of the press corps,” said one veteran White House reporter.
“We shouldn’t be rewarding those who actively obfuscate facts and seek to undermine freedom of the press, which Karine Jean-Pierre and her press office have done on numerous occasions and which the press corps has pushed back against.”
“God bless!” exclaimed another veteran of the briefing room.
“That’s the kind of story you would see during the Kennedy administration about Jackie O — not something you’d see about a press secretary dealing with serious issues facing the country.”
The second reporter told The Post he was surprised by “the lack of substance in that piece about the issues that concern the press and most Americans.”
The single most unaddressed issue, the journalist lamented, was, “Why is this administration so averse to hard questions from the press?”
A third reporter who regularly attends briefings quipped, in reference to Jean-Pierre’s regular non-answers: “I understand the question. I appreciate the question. I get the question. I’m just going to refer you to the White House counsel’s team for all questions about the substance of the KJP Vogue profile.”
A fourth White House journalist added, “This profile was supposed to offer a realistic portrayal, yet even Shonda Rhimes’ fiction feels more grounded in reality than this article.”
Telegraph's Madeline Fry Schultz had a clever headline, "It takes guts to interrupt a president. But Jean-Pierre isn’t your average press secretary: she’s a Vogue star." In her commentary she called the piece "an exercise in vapid hero-worship" and also brought up examples that readers are more likely to remember when it comes to Jean-Pierre's less-than-impressive moments at the podium. And there's larger issues to speak of as well:
With such glowing praise, it’s no surprise that Jean-Pierre has already started thinking about her legacy. She believes she will be best-remembered for swerving in front of a protester who rushed the stage in front of Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator, in a “famous video” from 2019. This writer, for one, had never seen it, and I somehow doubt that most Americans will be able to recall it, either.
In fact, if they do think of the press secretary, it will likely be to remember when she belittled their concerns about the economy, appeared to blame the Nashville school shooting this spring on Congressional Republicans, or claimed that illegal immigration has dropped 90 per cent under the Biden administration, accusing an incredulous reporter who disputed her claims of being “dramatic.”
There’s that “touch of compassion”!
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The assumption here, of course, is that the press secretary shouldn’t have an adversarial relationship with the press because the liberals in the corporate media should be able to take out their notepads and shut off their brains during a Democratic administration.
Perhaps more concerning than the perpetual double standard from the legacy media is its absolute incuriousness when it comes to Democratic politicians. Biden is hardly a scandal-free president (what’s that laptop everyone’s been talking about?), with his favourability polling dropping to perilous lows. As yesterday’s debacle appeared to illustrate, he can’t even be trusted to speak independently of his team – and yet, the liberal press doesn’t seem to care.
Vogue still continues to promote Jean-Pierre. On Monday they released a podcast episode that included "a Chat With White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre."
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