By Karine Jean-Pierre
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When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joined an impromptu Zoom meeting on July 21, 2024, she was shocked to find out that President Joe Biden was withdrawing from his reelection bid. A lifelong member of the Democratic Party, Jean-Pierre had disapproved of how party leaders were treating Biden following his debate performance against President Donald Trump, but she thought that he could withstand the critics. However, when he announced his decision to pull out of the 2024 election, Jean-Pierre—the first Black person and openly queer woman to hold her position—realized that the party that had shaped her worldview and career had shifted. In her new book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines*, Jean-Pierre dissects the party politics surrounding the campaign and how she decided to step away from the Democratic Party to become an independent. In this exclusive excerpt, Jean-Pierre shares the moment she learned that Biden would not run and the immediate aftermath.*
On that Sunday morning, July 21, I woke up wondering how we’d navigate an unpredictable week because the president, who was at his vacation residence in Rehoboth, Delaware, had COVID. I purposely didn’t turn on any of the Sunday political shows because with all the chatter about whether the president should stay or go, cable and the other networks had become too hard to watch. I checked in with Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, and some members of my team. Then, at about 1 p.m., I happened to glance at my work phone. There was an invite to an unexpected meeting happening in 45 minutes. The invitation had been sent to the senior advisers, myself, LaBolt, Tom Perez, and Stephen Benjamin, all of whom were usually part of our daily chief of staff meeting at 8:15 a.m. The impromptu gathering left me with mixed feelings. It had to be one of two things—one of the scenarios unimaginable.
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At 1:45, I hopped on Zoom, and again I could see all the folks there were the usual participants in the morning call. But then, gazing at the list of names, I saw that the leadership from the campaign was there as well. There was Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, former White House deputy chief of staff and now chair of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, who I figured would be leading the meeting with Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff. And there was another name on the screen. President Joe Biden. My mind went into overdrive.
My heart began to pound.
The meeting started right on time. And boom, the moment Biden popped on, he delivered the news.
“Hey everyone, it’s Joe,” he said. I don’t remember his exact words, but he told us he’d made the decision not to run for reelection. The party had done so much damage to his campaign, there was no coming back from it. He would finish his term, exit the presidential race, and endorse Harris. A statement would be going out shortly, telling the world his decision.
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I didn’t really hear the rest. I vaguely recall him thanking us all and saying he’d called O’Malley Dillon and the vice president right before joining us. I was numb. My camera was off because on a Sunday afternoon I hadn’t been prepared to appear on a surprise call. But now I noticed the faces of all those gathered to hear this devastating news. Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, and Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager. And I saw many people who, like me, worked for the administration. They looked sad, in shock. While we continued to sit there, the letter announcing Biden’s exit was issued. And of course, in the midst of my daze, my phone began buzzing incessantly. Everybody was texting, asking if it was true.
I never thought Biden would step down. The way the Democratic leadership was coming after him, I believed he would fight back harder. He was the descendant of Irish immigrants and someone who held firm to his convictions. He’d never let them win, I thought. He’d never step down even though the attacks on him were ugly and cruel. He would double down. “I know I have COVID,” he’d say, “but know that though I’m going to be out of the game for a little bit, I’m in this. I’m not going anywhere.” He’d thank the team and encourage us to continue doing what we’re doing.
On the call, Biden seemed to be totally at peace with his decision, but I was stunned, my feelings a blur. I was angry and sad. I was enraged and heartbroken that this man had given more than 50 years of his life to serving the American people, and in the end he’d been treated poorly by members of his own party. It was horrible.
I immediately texted my staff and told them to join a 2:30 p.m. call with the communications and digital press team led by Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser. Prior to that, there was a 2 p.m. meeting for senior staff. When we had the conversation with Dunn, though we were all aware the Hatch Act prohibited the White House team from discussing the campaign, it was still surprising to learn that even she didn’t know beforehand that Biden had decided to exit the race.
We were all trying to absorb the turn of events. After speaking to folks I trusted, including LaBolt, I decided to go ahead with my previously scheduled appearance on The View, seeing it as an opportunity to lift up the president and, in so doing, raise my spirits as well.
I also needed to think about when I would speak to the press corps under circumstances that had seismically changed since the moment I woke up that morning. Instead of addressing the agenda of a president who was also campaigning for another term, I would now have to take on questions about his nearly unprecedented decision to no longer run. We never did briefings when the president was away, and though we briefly considered my going to Delaware to speak to reporters there, we decided against changing things up and setting a precedent we didn’t want to maintain. Instead, we stuck with issuing a letter from the president’s physician each day that he continued to have COVID.
The White House Correspondents Association wasn’t happy about it. They wanted us to get rid of protocol, but we stuck to our guns. My first on-the-record interview in front of cameras since the president decided to not seek reelection would be Tuesday on The View.
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I had done The View, an ABC staple for decades, four times. Twice, I’d spoken to the hosts from the White House’s North Lawn, and on the other occasions I’d appeared in person on the show’s New York City set. We’d talked about my appearing again a few weeks earlier, before the Atlanta debate, but since that night we’d been playing it by ear, not sure when or if I’d appear because, honestly, we weren’t sure what was going on. Though the president had been emphatic that he was staying in the race, the chatter from the party’s leadership had become so nasty that it was getting harder and harder to do press briefings and appear in public. That Saturday, we were actually leaning against my doing the appearance, but once the president officially dropped out I wanted to do it, to laud a man who’d been treated so badly.
My wonderful babysitter arrived before dawn and I headed to Reagan National Airport, where a nice TSA agent hustled me through security, and I hopped on a United flight. I remember it was a cloudy day, the weather as gloomy as my mood.
We got to The View studios on Manhattan’s West Side more than an hour before we needed to be there. I sipped a chai latte from Starbucks, chatted with the show’s producer and chief booker, and prepared to talk about the president I respected so much in the wake of his brutal takedown. I can’t lie. When I finally sat down on set, it was a difficult conversation because the events that led to Biden’s decision still stung so badly on my heart.
The hosts and audience were wonderful. They understood. They empathized. They were kind. After we finished chatting, Whoopi Goldberg told me to text her. Sunny Hostin said I’d been doing a great job. Joy Behar said I needed to come back on. Sara Haines gave me a big hug, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, the show’s designated Republican, said she’d been watching my briefings and praised how I conducted myself. I flew home later that afternoon and was able to put my daughter to bed but was brokenhearted for our country.
The Democratic Party had defined my life, my career. Everything I’d done to make people’s lives better had been connected to it. The party was the vehicle that allowed me not just to have a front seat to history, working first on Obama’s presidential campaign then in his administration, but also to make some history of my own as the first Black woman and openly queer person to ever be a White House press secretary. Never had I considered leaving the party until now.
Not long after, I returned to New York for more television appearances and was sitting in my friend’s office, when I suddenly gave voice to a thought that had been rumbling in my mind. There’d been too much going on to really focus on my own analysis or takeaways of what happened. Now the cloud of unease hovering over me solidified into an idea about how I could possibly do something different. How I could channel my disappointment into some kind of concrete action that would allow me to fight for what I believed in without giving blind loyalty to a party I felt no longer deserved it.
“You know what? I’m going to become an independent. I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore.”
Read Part One and Part Two of Karine Jean-Pierre's interview with Peter Aitken of Newsweek.
Excerpted from Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines. Copyright © 2025
Karine Jean-Pierre. Published by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Grand Central Press, a division of Hachette Book Group.
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