Karine Jean-Pierre details decision to leave Democratic Party in new book

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre this week provided more insight into her decision to leave the Democratic Party over the party's treatment of her former boss.

The former press secretary announced her switch from the Democratic Party to an Independent earlier this year as she teased her book, which will be widely released on Oct. 21. 

An excerpt of the book released this week detailed the phone call in which former President Joe Biden told the White House team that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, Fox News reported.

"Biden seemed to be totally at peace with his decision, but I was stunned, my feelings a blur," Jean-Pierre wrote. "I was angry and sad. I was enraged and heartbroken that this man had given more than 50 years of his life to serving the American people, and in the end he’d been treated poorly by members of his own party. It was horrible."

The former White House official said she never expected her former boss to drop out of the race and that she felt he was betrayed and pushed out after his debate performance renewed fervor around his mental capability. 

"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," she continued. "Now the cloud of unease hovering over me solidified into an idea about how I could possibly do something different. How I could channel my disappointment into some kind of concrete action that would allow me to fight for what I believed in without giving blind loyalty to a party I felt no longer deserved it.

"'You know what? I’m going to become an independent. I don’t think I can stomach being in the Democratic Party anymore,'" she added.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.