On Thursday afternoon, the great Steven Nelson of the New York Post put more meat on the bone regarding reports bumbling, fumbling, stumbling White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre barred national security advisor and spokesman John Kirby from speaking to reporters about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal because she didn’t want arguably the only adult in the Biden team from stealing her thunder.
Nelson has been one of only a few journalists (plus Axios) to actually report on this one-sided feud with Jean-Pierre repeatedly having been allegedly loathe to work with him.
Nelson explained, that not surprisingly, it had both “[j]ournalists and aides to President Biden...seething” and that it had real world implications as Jean-Pierre’s “spotlight-stealing forced the nation to wait an extra hour to learn details of the American hostages being released, including their names[.]”
He said the move came from the top as “[n]ational security adviser Jake Sullivan personally asked for” Kirby to be the person to answer questions and went to Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, “but Jean-Pierre refused to allow it, citing her own prearranged plans to celebrate herself” and one source dubbing it “her goodbye party” and a self-proclaimed “celebration of her.”
Zients even supposedly “was intimidated by the situation” and that “Jean-Pierre has at times threatened to call in powerful allies, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, to back her up, this person said,” essentially playing the race card against her superior, given his skin color.
As we wrote at NewsBusters in our recap, Jean-Pierre provided nothing of substance about the landmark and possibly life-changing deal for the region and reporters clearly sensed it.
Nelson had more serious dirt to dish out:
An indignant journalist told The Post they spotted expensive bottles of champagne, including Veuve Clicquot, on Jean-Pierre’s West Wing desk after the briefing — apparently for a boozy staff sendoff, though the press secretary herself does not drink.
“I thought at the last minute she would just break and say, ‘OK, fine, [Kirby] can just come at the top and he can leave, and then I can wax poetic about my time here, and then I don’t really even have to answer any questions and be grilled on anything,'” the first source said.
“But she really wanted to make a point that the briefing room was ‘hers.’ And so that’s why she pushed so much, and in the end, she feels like she won, and I guess she kind of did.
“She looks silly, and God help her in whatever she does next, but in this personal battle that she’s had with [former White House communications chief] Anita [Dunn] and Kirby for the entirety of her time in the press briefing room, I know that she considers it a win.”
A person he called “a longtime Biden aide” lambasted the incompetent Jean-Pierre: “Not allowing actual news to be delivered...for your own ego is disgraceful.”
An anonymous White House correspondent chimed in that this was “totally unsurprising behavior from someone who was either incapable of recognizing her own shortcomings or unwilling or unable to put in the work required to overcome them.”
