Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke about how “shocking” it was to see Democrat leaders turn on then-President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election, comparing their public rejection to a “firing squad.”
Biden’s disastrous debate performance last June revealed his mental decline in a way Democrats could no longer ignore or deny, and party leadership responded by calling on him to relinquish the party’s nomination. Biden ended up stepping down, and Democrats replaced him with then-Vice President Kamala Harris with no input from voters.
At an event at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre was asked to share what challenges she experienced in three weeks after the debate debacle and before Biden ultimately dropped out — and whether he should have run for a second term in the first place.
“He was the President of the United States at the time, he was the leader of the Democratic Party. It was truly his decision to make on what he wanted to do, and I supported that 100 percent. Whatever it was, I was going to support that 100 percent,” she answered. “Because he had the right to, as the leader of the Democratic Party coming out of a pretty successful midterm. There was supposed to be a red wave, there wasn’t a red wave.”
“I… look, personally, I think what was the toughest thing to see in the three weeks was there was a disconnect for me [in] what was happening with leadership in the Democratic Party and how it was truly, as my former colleague, communications director Ben Labolt said, it was a firing squad,” Jean-Pierre continued.
“I had never seen anything like it before. I had never seen a party do that in the way that they did, and it was hurtful and sad to see that happening. A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country,” she added. “A person who I believe, as I mentioned before, has done more in one term than most presidents had done in two terms, historical things, and I was shocked by what I was seeing.”
When questioning by another member of the panel, Jean-Pierre confirmed she was talking about Democrat leaders who criticized Biden and called the sudden turn of public opinion “shocking.”
“Instead of coming together to really be unified and trying to figure out how do we save our democracy how do we fight back, that’s what I was seeing,” she said. “That’s what we decided to do for three weeks, and, you know, it was truly, truly unfortunate, and I think it hurt us more than I think folks realized, to have done that.”
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