In a 1977 release, the Talking Heads included a lyric in one of their songs that somehow foresaw the approach to be employed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (KJP): “You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything.”
In the view of many observers, the daily double-talk from the White House podium by KJP came on like a come-on from a carnival barker: instead of presenting straightforward, unvarnished truths from the briefing room lectern, listeners were subjected to a daily diet of kaleidoscope logic.
The main reason her versions of events worked for as long as they did was that the briefing room was populated by a band of willing accomplices, happily lapping up the White House spokesperson’s blather. Based on years of softball questions that the White House legacy media corps put forth, it was apparent that the majority of the reporters were content to run with KJP’s falsehoods in order to maintain their access to “unnamed, high level Administration sources.”
How could this be? The legacy news organizations operated on one unspoken assumption: there were not many scholars among their readers or viewers who ruminated on Socrates’s time-tested maxim that “the only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.”
Consequently, KJP and the White House press corps made bank on the general public not weighing how much they did not know and what was being omitted. But American news consumers, after years of confronting reality in their daily lives, experienced enormous living cost increases and faced massive spikes in crime. As a result, they were not inclined to wave off the daily White House gaslighting when it came time to vote.
Here are some of KJP’s most egregious examples that turned many casual political observers into vigorous President Trump supporters:
In one press briefing, when discussing inflation, she said, “We are seeing inflation come down.”
What she did not bother to explain was that although the rate of inflation increase had slowed somewhat, the average 20% consumer price surges buyers suffered under Biden were not coming back to Earth. What she was actually describing was that the most recently reported costs were being added to the 20% established base.
This attempt at soft-pedaling economic conditions that people were experiencing every day was infuriating and misleading.
Another one of her false narratives focused on alleged voter suppression. In some states, those who met voting age and residency requirements would have to present government information to verify citizenship to participate in elections.
She repeatedly stoked fears that such laws were grounded on “a host of anti-voter policies” and were based on the “big lie” — that “high turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time. They don’t have to be, one doesn’t have to happen on its own. They could be happening at the same time.”
If the continuing claims she promoted were anywhere near as onerous as she made them out to be, the results certainly did not squelch 2024 voter participation.
For example, in 2021, Georgia passed the Election Integrity Act, which required voters to present a government-issued photo ID to receive a ballot. In 2024, 68.3% of Georgia’s registered voters turned out, which equated to 300,000 more participants making their choices known than during the 2020 election.
On the other side of the continent, KJP’s so-called voter suppression initiatives took on a different characteristic. The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles, according to The Federalist, registered more than 54,000 individuals so they could gain access to ballots via an unverified opt-in voter registration. When people applied for their driver’s licenses, the state’s eligibility forms required no proof of citizenship at all.
Another misdirection KJP spent a lot of time on was attempting to convince citizens not to believe what they were witnessing on the wide open southern and northern borders by including parolees from some countries in her calculations. Her attempts to spin the abject boundary policy failures were laughable.
“What Americans should know is that the president has done the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border since day one,” she said. “When it comes to illegal immigration, you’ve seen it come down by more than 90%. And that’s because of this, the actions that this president has taken.”
In another instance, KJP attempted to imply that President Biden occupied the moral high ground when it came to his belief in the rule of law, in comparison to President Trump. “The fundamental issue around the idea that anyone should be exempt from being held accountable for crimes committed, regardless of what position you hold in the United States of America, is something that I know Americans also feel very strongly about.”
Promoting that philosophy was certainly a good talking point, but she seemed to be overcome with a willful blindness when it came to President Biden’s illegal use of classified materials found in his possession for use in his upcoming memoirs.
After an investigation, Special Counsel Robert Hur saw things very differently from how KJP did when he stated, “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
During his searches of Biden homes and offices, Hur located foreign policy and military documents regarding Afghanistan that were designated as classified. His report cited these materials as “implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
He went on to describe how these “present[ed] serious risks to national security, given the vulnerability of extraordinarily sensitive information to loss or compromise to America’s adversaries.”
Cumulatively, all of these misrepresentations and fanciful claims created a distinct impression in voters’ minds that significant change was imperative in early November, and they acted accordingly.
As time thankfully winds down on the Biden administration and KJP in particular, Andy Warhol comes to mind. He once opined that “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” Many would alter that quotation when describing Ms. Information by swapping out “famous” for “infamous.”
Well, time’s up, KJP. Your lectern privileges have been revoked, and not a moment too soon. But don’t concern yourself; the nation’s mood is already on the road to recovery.
Yes, the dogs have barked, but the caravan has moved on.
Marc E. Zimmerman is a former legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. Congress.
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