"There’s a silent minority of people out there who feel that Biden was taken advantage of, and most people don’t want to say it. Is that what you mean?"

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner asks Karine Jean-Pierre in an interview.

Jean-Pierre answers: "Let me just say, this is my experience that I’m speaking to, and what I saw. I just want to be very, very clear: on average. I just want to be clear: on average. Not from one interview, not from one debate. On average. I have heard from many, many people who were disappointed by the reaction of the Democratic Party. I have. I have. And these are citizens. These are people who vote."

Later in the interview, Chotiner says:

"Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work. When you’re a first, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt."

"I want to be clear: I do not regret my decision to keep my life private while in office. This piece is no apology, it’s an explanation. An explanation of who I am, what I’ve been through, and what it’s like to come from where I come from and sit in the public eye.... From the beginning of my time as press secretary, I navigated the typically choppy waters of American politics.... And I have also trudged through thick, thick grief... For more than 18 months, I drove up to New York every weekend I could to see my mom.... As present as I was in organizing my mom’s [cancer] care, I still tried to maintain a sense of privacy when I visited her. I’d wear big sunglasses, a mask, and no makeup. Unable to help herself, my mom had already bragged about me to anyone who would listen. Yet the weight of it all felt like too much. I am used to heaviness.... But I was losing my grip. I told my mom I wanted to move to New York so I could help her full-time. 'You are not quitting your job,' she said.... Quitting the administration would hurt her more than my full-time caretaking would help....."

Writes Karine Jean-Pierre, in "Karine Jean-Pierre, President Biden’s Barrier-Breaking Press Secretary, Reveals Some Truths About Her Job/'I have kept details about my private life under lock and key,' she writes for Vanity Fair. 'Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work'" (Vanity Fair)(the mother's cancer was cured).

AND: Here's the new press secretary, who also faces the challenge of convincing you that her selection was merit-based:

Conservatives upset?

I'm reading "White House roasted for saying Biden will give a ‘big boy press conference’: ‘Potty training next?’/Conservatives upset by ‘unbecoming’ joke in Monday’s White House briefing" (Independent).

Today's the big press conference that the White House referred to as “big boy press conference.” I would think that joke would upset Biden supporters. The idea of the press conference is, ostensibly, to give Biden another chance to prove he has the ability to serve as President. To tack a silly name onto the event is to undercut his effort. People can't stop saying "big boy press conference." Aren't conservatives just laughing?

"Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in, and we have the right to tell them about it..."

"... because we are Americans, too. Freedom of speech is our birthright. We were born with the right to say what we believe. That right cannot be taken away no matter who is in the White House. But they're trying anyway. Almost three years ago, the Biden administration illegally spied on our text messages and then leaked the contents to their servants in the news media. They did this in order to stop a Putin interview that we were planning. Last month, we're pretty certain they did exactly the same thing once again, but this time we came to Moscow anyway.... Elon Musk, to his great credit, has promised not to suppress or block this interview once we posted on his platform X, and we're grateful for that...."

From "Tucker Carlson In Moscow: I'm Interviewing Putin 'To Inform People" On "History-Altering Developments'" (RCP).

A New York Post reporter asked the White House Press secretary about Carlson's accusation:

"[Karine] Jean-Pierre couldn’t read until the third grade. Her parents—consumed with multiple jobs—had assumed she would learn in school."

"She did not. Determined to help her siblings avoid the same fate, Jean-Pierre set up a classroom in the basement when she was in middle school. Her brother remembers her teaching him not just how to read and write, but 'how to articulate emotions, how to speak.' When her sister took dance classes, Jean-Pierre handled drop-off and pickup.... [H]er parents started handing her bills to decipher. 'I was like the third parent,' she says.... She records instances of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a cousin. She didn’t tell her parents.... She describes a suicide attempt in college: Her sister found her in her car with the exhaust on and shook her awake. Jean-Pierre threw her urine-soaked khakis in the trash and never discussed the incident—or what drove her to it—with her parents. She had known she was gay since childhood, but the book recounts only one agonizing attempt at coming out to her mother. ('I could see the revulsion on her face,' Jean-Pierre writes.)..."

From "White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Has Made History—And Waves" (Vogue).

Ludicrous Washington Post headline uses the word "intruder" to characterize Trump — and Trump is intruding on Biden.

"Biden, trying to tout his policies, faces a familiar intruder: Trump."

Yeah, stop thinking about the shocking literal intrusion on Trump that was the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Think about how Trump, by getting attention, figuratively intrudes on Biden.

The headline sits atop a column by Matt Viser. Subheadline: "For much of his presidency, Biden has had to compete for attention with the 'former guy,' who left office a year-and-a half-ago but has never really left the public consciousness."

How can we stop thinking about Trump when his antagonists are doing such conspicuous things to him?

It's a new column. It went up at 5 this morning, after the Mar-a-Lago raid. Quite aside from that, the January 6th hearings are highly public political theater demanding that we focus on Trump and not look away. It's ridiculous to blame Trump as an "intruder"!

Let's read the column:

"If the president is working so hard to free someone who is in jail in Russia for some weed, shouldn’t we free people in America?"

"There are people in jail in America for the same stuff. Shouldn’t we free them too? My opinion is that people should not be in jail for non-violent drug crimes."

Elon Musk said what many of us have been thinking. He's quoted at "Elon Musk gives scalding take on Biden’s push to free Brittney Griner" (NY Post).

In other Brittney Griner news at the NY Post:

"Democratic Party officials earlier this year approved a plan which requires any state that wants to hold a nominating contest before the first Tuesday in March..."

"... including the traditional early four of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — to apply for permission. Last month, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and Washington made presentations to the Rules and Bylaws Committee detailing why they should be among the first states to hold presidential nominating contests in the next presidential election. At the time of the presentations, the focus was especially on Iowa, which was proposing dramatic changes to its complicated system as it aimed to maintain its 'first in the nation' status in the face of criticism of the caucus process and of the state's lack of diversity and competitiveness at the presidential level."

 
From "Democratic National Committee to delay rules committee vote on early state calendar" (CNN).

They're putting off the decision until after the midterm elections, perhaps mostly to keep the focus on the midterms, but maybe something about the midterms will be useful in deciding who gets to go first. Is it hard to understand why Iowa and New Hampshire have held onto their position for so long? I've always assumed that it's a deliberate effort to reduce the power of black voters. The broad field of candidates must pass first through a process dominated by white voters.

I googled "percentage of black voters at iowa caucus" and the first hit was a 2020 article in The Guardian, "The real outrage about Iowa? The Democratic party silencing black voters/If Democrats want to dismantle white supremacy, they can start right now by dismantling a caucus system that ignores black voters."

That article was written by Karine Jean-Pierre, who is identified as the chief public affairs officer for MoveOn and a political analyst for MSNBC. Of course, she is now the White House press secretary.

She wrote:

"What we're trying to say...." Just say it! Otherwise it sounds as though you're not really saying it but referring to something written down somewhere.

Jean-Pierre: "What we're trying to say is that the economy is in a better place than it has been historically." pic.twitter.com/KIO61OnGNN

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 7, 2022

I was going to say that reminded me of George H.W. Bush's "Message: I care," but then I found that old clip and watched it...

  

... and even though that still makes me laugh, by contrast to Karine Jean-Pierre's performance, it felt kind of authentic. What's similar is the sense that he was referring to talking points that he wasn't supposed to say out loud. It sees that he'd been given the note that he ought to convey the message "I care," and instead of showing his caring, he stated the contents of the note. That's what Jean-Pierre did. It seems that she couldn't directly say the economy is in something like a good place. She knew that's what she was supposed to say. And then what she said was revealing that background scenario: They've figured out what they should try to say. That gives the whole game away!

"Composed and genial, [Karine] Jean-Pierre was successful in observing the first rule of media briefings – do no harm – but did appear a little too cautious on one point."

"She was repeatedly asked if she would 'call out' individuals such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson or Republican members of Congress who fan the flames of extremism and the 'great replacement' theory. Time and again she refused. 'It doesn’t matter who it is,' she insisted. 'If a person espouses hatred, we need to call that out. I’m not going to get a back and forth on names and who said what.' One reporter asked if Biden sees a connection [between the Buffalo massacre and] Trump’s 'ultra-Maga' movement.... When the press secretary said, 'We’re not going to get into politics here,' another journalist loudly objected that this seemed to be letting the culprits off the hook.... Critics will say the Biden administration is pulling its punches.... [T]he job of White House press secretary is often about ducking controversies and not making headlines. Psaki was masterful at promising to 'circle back' and 'not get ahead of the president.' Now, like the TV time traveller Doctor Who, the press secretary has regenerated in different and diverse form but with essentially the same character."

From "Karine Jean-Pierre makes history but inherits a world of trouble/The White House’s first Black press secretary used her opening remarks to reflect on this new chapter" by David Smith (in The Guardian).

It's an odd locution — "diverse form." Smith is referring to something Jean-Pierre herself said as she introduced herself on her first press briefing: She's "a Black, gay, immigrant woman." How can one person be "diverse"? Anyone is only the collection of characteristics that they are, and each of us has our set of things. I think "diverse" ought to refer to a group of people, and to call an individual "diverse" is to expect your listeners to fill in the picture, to visualize a larger set of people who are different from the one we're calling "diverse." The group — here, presumably, all the White House press secretaries in history — is understood to be white, straight, and born in the U.S.A., so Jean-Pierre makes this group more diverse. 

It reminds me of how people sometimes say about an individual, "He's different." That tends to be an insult. Different from what? You're presuming a norm, and he's off the norm. Someone saying "She's diverse" ought to think about whether the intended praise is some kind of insult. It presumes the person you're talking about is the variation, and the basic form is somebody else. It's otherizing!

Anyway, I'm glad Jean-Pierre didn't indulge in connecting dots about the Buffalo murderer's manifesto and things Republicans think. That's some of the lowliest discourse I've seen in this millennium.