The Patriot Post® · Les Incompétents: Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

When Karine Jean-Pierre was selected to replace Jen Psaki as Joe Biden’s new press secretary, we heard a lot about her being the first lesbian, first immigrant, and first black woman in that position. In fact, that was the very first thing Jean-Pierre mentioned when she took to the podium for her first press conference.

As it turns out, though, there’s more to being a good press secretary than one’s skin color or sexual preference. Much more.

In fact, we’re finding out pretty quickly that checking off all the Left’s “intersectionality” prerequisites really doesn’t have anything at all to do with this job. And by all accounts, Jean-Pierre isn’t doing it well.

Even with the benefit of softball questions from her friends in the press, she can’t seem to answer a straightforward question about the baby formula crisis without fumbling through her three-ring binder, awkwardly pausing, and then mumbling an incoherent response.

Apparently, the graduate program at Columbia University doesn’t require a class in public speaking, nor did it remind students to come to class having done their homework.

As political analyst Kylee Zempel writes: “You’d think every Biden White House press conference would be a home run because, despite the president being largely incoherent, the press corps is exceedingly friendly to Democrats. Nonetheless, there are no home runs for President Joe Biden’s new press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. It seems everything she says is a swing and a miss.”

Over at Fox News, Joe Concha says, “It’s just truly amazing how unprepared Jean-Pierre is on a daily basis.” But, he adds: “There has never been a more unsteady, unconfident, unprepared press secretary quite like Karine Jean-Pierre. She couldn’t be the spokesperson for Mayor Quimby or Mayor Goodway. She continues to read most of her answers from a binder during the press briefings. Not just like looking down at notes. We’re talking about whole paragraphs.”

When she’s asked a clear, simple, direct question about current events or issues, Jean-Pierre becomes flummoxed and dishes up a word salad. Case in point: When CNN’s Don Lemon asked her whether the Biden administration’s policies contributed to inflation, Jean-Pierre’s response was that “it has put us in a place where we can actually put us in a place where the American people feel — can actually, we can take on inflation.”

Huh? Read her answer a few more times, and it still won’t make sense.

In response to questions about inflation, Jean-Pierre simply denies reality and pretends things have never been better. When Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked what Joe Biden thinks about the stock market now, a few months after having crowed about how the market would continue to hit record highs, Jean-Pierre said this: “The American people are well positioned to face these challenges because of the economic historic gains that we have made … under this president in the last 16 months.”

“Well positioned”? Try telling that to American families who can’t afford to put gas in the car or pay for groceries, let alone try to find baby formula.

To give her some credit, though, there’s one thing Jean-Pierre is good at: lying on behalf of the president.

For example, she recently claimed that Biden condemned the assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The truth? Biden never said a word about it.

Maybe we’d be more likely to give Jean-Pierre some time to get her feet wet if we hadn’t been told how amazing she is. Over and over again.

Sacre bleu.

Jean-Pierre is something far short of amazing. But in a way, she’s like her boss: They’re both incompetent people overwhelmed by events and in over their heads.

Democrats seem to think skin color and sexual proclivities are all that matter. In that sense, Jean-Pierre is the right person for this job. But for the rest of us, it’d be nice to have a press secretary who can answer questions coherently, if not honestly.