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Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre argued in an opinion piece published Friday that President Donald Trump was making the same messaging mistakes as her former boss, former President Joe Biden.
“Mr. Biden wanted his team to highlight his domestic agenda,” she wrote in The New York Times guest essay. “His policies were working, and he wanted the country to understand what he was doing and why. But the polling was clear: Our economic message didn’t land. Too many people were struggling with the prices of groceries, rent, child care and gas. Their lived experience did not match the encouraging economic news, and that disconnect shaped the entire public conversation.”
Jean-Pierre pointed to the president’s messaging on gas prices, inflation and the war in Iran in the piece, and said, “When leaders neglect lived experience, the message collapses.”
“The truth is, we had a stale message and outdated models for delivering it. It cost Mr. Biden and, eventually, Vice President Kamala Harris dearly. President Trump is now making a mistake even more damaging,” she wrote.
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Karine Jean-Pierre, former President Joe Biden’s press secretary, wrote a guest essay in The New York Times arguing President Trump was making the same mistakes as her former boss on Oct. 2, 2026. (Rayford/Getty Images; Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via Getty Images; Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)
When asked about Jean-Pierre’s argument, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital in a statement: “Biden’s policies destroyed our economy by creating the worst inflation crisis in history, instituting burdensome red tape, and stifling American energy dominance. President Trump has fixed the disaster that Joe Biden created by cooling inflation, signing the largest middle-class tax cuts in history, lowering drug prices, and reshoring our manufacturing industry. The fake news won’t, so President Trump will continue to tout his economic wins to Americans.”
Jean-Pierre admitted the administration misread the public and said her press briefings fueled much of the debate surrounding Biden’s age, in addition to the economic messaging.
“We learned that lesson with the economy and again with the debate around Mr. Biden’s age. Looking back, we misread the public mood, thinking the age conversation would fade. At best, my responses from the podium about Mr. Biden’s age failed to put out the fire; at worst, they fueled it,” she conceded.
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Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Jan. 10, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
She also pointed to the changing media ecosystem and said, “A TikTok about high prices, filmed with a phone in a grocery store aisle or in front of a gas pump,” would get more attention than her press briefings or a cabinet official on the Sunday news programs.
“The Trump White House should realize that over the next two years, there will be only more, not less, scrutiny when the president appears to drift off during meetings, is cagey about the results of his medical exams or goes on one of his erratic, late-night social media screeds,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “His communications team should know by now that the prices at the pump and the self-checkout line are undefeated.”
“Once people believe their government is not speaking to their reality, it becomes incredibly difficult to earn that trust back. I felt that tension every day in the White House briefing room. I see it happening again now,” she concluded.
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President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Durant, Oklahoma, on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. President Trump and Vice President Vance are expected to be on the campaign trail almost every day in October, as surveys show Republicans rapidly losing ground amid voter anger over the economy and the war in Iran. (Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Jean-Pierre released a book in 2025 about her time in the White House titled, “Independent.”
Ahead of its release, she revealed that she was leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an Independent.
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“The Democratic Party had defined my life, my career,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “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 [Barack] 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.”