White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had a difficult job in 2024, defending President Joe Biden as he spiraled out of his own reelection bid.
Biden followed that up by going back on his word about pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, putting Jean-Pierre in a bind, and often forcing her to face off with reporters in the James S. Brady briefing room and aboard Air Force One, even as her boss faded from the spotlight.
Here are the top 10 tussles of 2024 between Jean-Pierre and reporters:
The younger Biden was a frequent topic of conversation in press briefings, one in which Jean-Pierre rarely had an easy answer.
Hunter Biden made a surprise visit to Congress in January, and reporters were curious whether he had been hanging out at the White House.
“Hunter Biden on Capitol Hill — how big of a headache is that for you?” Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked.
She refused to elaborate on whether Hunter Biden stayed at the White House and made the oft-repeated point that he makes his own decisions.
“Hunter Biden is a private citizen,” Jean-Pierre responded after chuckling at Doocy’s question. “He is not a member of the White House, as you know, and I just don’t have anything else to share.”
It did not end there. Doocy noted Jean-Pierre’s earlier statement that Joe Biden was familiar with what his son would say when he skipped a congressional subpoena to make a public statement on Dec. 13, 2023.
“He doesn’t help with his business, but does help him skirt congressional subpoenas?” Doocy asked.
Jean-Pierre did not laugh at that one, calling it “incredibly disingenuous” and “a jump” that is “not even true.”
The press secretary got her own quip when asked about Joe Biden’s reliance on notecards during public appearances.
“You’re upset because the president has notecards?” she shot back at the reporter.
Channelling Allen Iverson, she added, “You’re asking me a question about the president having notecards?”
“Answer his question,” another reporter, Newsmax’s James Rosen, shouted.
“I’m not speaking to you right now, James,” Jean-Pierre replied. “But thank you so much for interjecting.”
3. ‘That is an incredibly offensive question to ask’
One of Jean-Pierre’s most heated moments came outside of the briefing room and with a non-White House media personality.
During an interview with Charlotte’s WBT radio, she took offense to questions about dementia and high prices, then appeared to hang up the phone.
LISTEN: KJP hangs up on a Charlotte, North Carolina radio host after being asked if Joe Biden has dementia and about high gas prices and high grocery prices. pic.twitter.com/eu69qAQhVH
— Conservative War Machine (@WarMachineRR) March 26, 2024
When asked by host Mark Garrison if Biden had dementia, Jean-Pierre called the question “offensive” and “insulting.”
“I can’t even believe you’re asking me this question,” she said. “That is an incredibly offensive question to ask. For the past several years, the president’s physician has laid out in a comprehensive way the president’s health. This is a president who, if you watch him every day, if you really pay attention to his record and what he has done, you will see exactly how focused he’s been on the American people, how historic his actions have been.”
After answering the inflation question, she said, “Have an amazing day,” and ended the spot.
The White House responded to the report of Jean-Pierre hanging up the phone, saying the radio station “artificially attached a sound effect that our phones do not make.”
4. ‘Cheap fakes’
One of Jean-Pierre’s most infamous talking points came in June, when she said clips of Biden appearing to zone out or wander off were “cheap fakes,” a play on the term “deepfake.”
Not only that, she singled out conservative news outlets for spreading them.
“The right-wing critics of the president have a credibility problem,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It tells you everything we need to know about how desperate Republicans are. Instead of talking about the president’s performance in office, we’re seeing these deepfakes, these manipulated videos.”
Most of the clips were not manipulated or otherwise edited except for length.
“What they’re doing is pure bad faith, and it’s been fact-checked by many, including conservative media,” she said.
Days later, Biden’s weakened condition was confirmed during his disastrous debate performance against President-elect Donald Trump. Jean-Pierre was undeterred, saying, “I don’t regret it at all.”
5. ‘That’s inappropriate’
When Biden’s fitness for office took center stage in the summer, Jean-Pierre got an assist from White House Correspondents’ Association President Kelly O’Donnell.
O’Donnell, an NBC reporter, began to ask if Biden could address the press himself inside the briefing room.
Rosen, of Newsmax, chimed in, “If he’s awake.”
“That’s inappropriate,” O’Donnell snapped back. Jean-Pierre then jumped into the fray.
“We would invite the President to tell us directly”
“If he’s awake”
“That’s innapropriate” pic.twitter.com/7ik6k18jsu
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) July 3, 2024
“As you heard from your colleague, the president of the WHCA, that’s inappropriate,” she said, albeit with a slight smile on her face. “Thank you, Kelly.”
6. ‘It doesn’t matter how hard you push me’
Tensions boiled over in the weeks between Biden’s June 27 debate and July 21, when he dropped his reelection bid.
By July 8, reports surfaced that Dr. Kevin Cannard, a specialist in Parkinson’s disease, had visited the White House eight times in eight months.
When Jean-Pierre was pressed for specifics about those visits, things got testy.
In one particularly heated exchange, Ed O’Keefe of CBS News repeatedly asked the press secretary to “state very clearly yes or no” if any of Cannard’s trips to the White House were to treat the president.
Instead of answering the question directly, Jean-Pierre told the assembled reporters that Biden had undergone three neurological exams since entering office as part of his annual physicals — but she declined to elaborate on Cannard’s trips, saying she was bound by personal security concerns.
“It doesn’t matter how hard you push me. It doesn’t matter how angry you get with me from here,” Jean-Pierre added after O’Keefe voiced additional frustration with “how information has been shared with the press corps.”
“Has the president been treated for Parkinson’s? No,” she declared. “Is he being treated for Parkinson’s? No. Is he taking medication for Parkinson’s? No.”
7. ‘She was not a border czar’
Biden took some pressure off his deputy by dropping out of the race, only for the spotlight to shine on Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also part of his administration.
Doocy pressed Jean-Pierre about the vice president’s involvement at the border.
“Democrats on Capitol Hill are being handed this card with talking points about the vice president and the border,” Doocy said as he held up a flier. He told the press secretary that the first talking point said, “Vice President Harris was never appointed border czar. There’s never been such a position, it doesn’t exist.”
The White House press secretary denied knowledge about the talking points while agreeing that the position never existed.
“We are going to debunk the false characterization of the vice president,” she said. “She was not a border czar. Independent fact-checkers have said the same thing, that that did not exist, and that that is not true.”
KJP: “We are going to debunk the false characterization of the vice president. She was not a border czar. And it’s not just us. Independent fact-checkers have said the same thing, that that did not exist.” pic.twitter.com/ghL56XZ4Qt
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 25, 2024
She also pushed back against the premise of the question.
“Why are Republicans so sensitive about actually not owning up to them getting in the way of a border deal? Why?” she pushed back. “Why won’t they own up to that? Why won’t they own up to the last president who told them not to move forward?”
Doocy: Why are Democrats so sensitive about VP and the border?
KJP: Why are Republican so sensitive about not owning up to them getting in the way of the border deal? pic.twitter.com/qfL4In2dZj
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 25, 2024
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE’S TOP 2023 TUSSLES WITH WHITE HOUSE REPORTERS
8. ‘He was not calling Trump supporters garbage’
Jean-Pierre was forced to deny the obvious after Biden called Trump supporters “garbage” in the waning days of the 2024 election. Reporters quickly got on her case about it, and she rejected the accusations.
“Just to clarify, he was not calling Trump supporters garbage, which is why he wanted to make sure that he put out a statement that clarified what he meant and what he was trying to say,” she said.
Reporters repeatedly grilled Jean-Pierre over Biden’s mistake, however, asking if he regretted the comments or if the president had been reading from a script of prepared remarks.
She declined to “get into specifics” and said clarification was only needed “to make sure that his words were not taken out of context.”
“I said this already, and I’ll say it again: from Day One, this president has always said that he would be a president for all Americans,” Jean-Pierre said.
She did not say whether Biden apologized to Harris for stepping on her campaign’s message.
9. The ‘only person’ to beat Trump
When Harris lost to Trump on Nov. 5, Jean-Pierre responded to hostile questions about Biden by pointing to the scoreboard.
She was asked in a harsh tone whether Biden and his team showed “arrogance” in believing that only he could beat Trump, and responded by asserting that the president remains the lone candidate to do so.
“This is the president who has been the only person who has been able to beat Donald Trump,” Karine Jean-Pierre said, shrugging her shoulders for emphasis. “That is true. In 2020, he was able to do that.”
Reporter asks Karine Jean-Pierre about whether Biden and his team showed “arrogance of believing he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump”:
“This is the president who has been the only person has been able to beat Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/nptAI03ZGt
— The Recount (@therecount) November 7, 2024
“There were more than 20 candidates who tried to beat” Trump, she said, including GOP primary challengers in the tally. Biden “was the only one that has been able to do that.”
10. ‘There’ll be more to come’
The press secretary’s year ended the same way it started — with a controversy surrounding Hunter Biden.
In December, it was because his father went back on his word and issued him a sweeping pardon covering any known or unknown crimes over an 11-year period.
Joe Biden never took questions from the press on the matter, leaving Jean-Pierre to bear the brunt of the criticism.
“I know what I said,” Jean-Pierre told reporters, referring to her own role in denying that a pardon would happen. “I know what the president said. That is where we were at the time. That is where the president was at the time. … He wrestled with it and made this decision. … Circumstances have changed.”
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Reporters kept asking about it, leading her to concede that additional pardons could be forthcoming.
“Certainly, the president is looking at, you know, reviewing next steps, and there’ll be more to come,” she said. If they do, Jean-Pierre could face at least one more hostile press briefing before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20, 2025.
