Jean-Pierre Blasts Democrat ‘Firing Squad’ For Kicking Biden Off Ticket
Just over 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term, Democrats are still reeling from the implosion of their 2024 campaign—most notably the unprecedented ousting of their own sitting president.
Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke candidly this week at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, reflecting on what she called a “shocking” and “hurtful” betrayal of then-President Joe Biden by top Democratic leaders after his catastrophic debate performance last June.
What followed, she said, was a three-week meltdown inside the Democratic Party as powerful figures pressured Biden to drop out of the race, leading to his eventual withdrawal from the campaign.
“He was the President of the United States at the time, he was the leader of the Democratic Party. It was truly his decision to make on what he wanted to do, and I supported that 100%,” Jean-Pierre said. “Because he had the right to, as the leader of the Democratic Party coming out of a pretty successful midterm. There was supposed to be a red wave, there wasn’t a red wave.”
Yet that loyalty was not reciprocated by the president’s own party, Jean-Pierre admitted.
“I… look, personally, I think what was the toughest thing to see in the three weeks was there was a disconnect for me [in] what was happening with leadership in the Democratic Party and how it was truly, as my former colleague, communications director Ben Labolt said, it was a firing squad,” she said.
“I had never seen anything like it before. I had never seen a party do that in the way that they did, and it was hurtful and sad to see that happening,” she added. “A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country.”
Jean-Pierre described the internal turmoil as damaging not only to the president, but to the party’s image as a whole.
“Instead of coming together to really be unified and trying to figure out how do we save our democracy, how do we fight back, that’s what I was seeing,” she said. “It was truly, truly unfortunate, and I think it hurt us more than I think folks realized, to have done that.”
Her comments echo what many conservatives had long pointed out during the 2024 election: that Biden’s decline was evident—and that Democratic leadership, for political convenience, waited far too long to confront it.
A bombshell report from The New York Times earlier this month confirmed what many suspected. Biden’s closest aides were well aware that he was not the same man who had taken office. The report stated, “He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait.”
According to the Times, longtime aide Mike Donilon warned Biden in 2022, saying his “biggest issue is the perception of age.” But instead of addressing the problem head-on, insiders chose to shield him.
“[They] cooperated,” the Times reported, “to manage his decline.”
Now, with the Democratic Party divided, demoralized, and leaderless, many are left wondering if the infighting and political calculations from 2024 will haunt them well into the 2026 midterms.