“I am everything Donald Trump hates,” said Karine Jean-Pierre in 2018. Appointed spokesperson for the White House on Thursday, she will become the first black and openly lesbian woman to hold this position as prestigious as it is fearfully exposed.
She will replace Jen Psaki, of whom she was hitherto deputy, from May 13, according to a press release from the White House in which Joe Biden said he was “proud” of this appointment. The Democrat praises the “experience, talent and honesty” of his future “Press Secretary”.
“She will be the first black and openly LGBTQ+ woman” in this position, tweeted for her part Jen Psaki, who had made it known from the start that she would hand over during the term of office: “She will give a voice to many people and it will allow many to have big dreams. »
Karine-Jean Pierre shares the life of a CNN journalist, with whom she has a daughter. According to US media, the outgoing spokeswoman would join the progressively oriented MSNBC channel.
As number two, Karine Jean-Pierre has already appeared on the podium several times, on the famous blue background of the “James S. Brady Press Briefing Room”, for the highly perilous exercise of the daily press conference of the White House, broadcast live and dissected ad infinitum.
Before her, only one other black woman, Judy Smith, had served as deputy White House spokeswoman under President George HW Bush in 1991.
American dream
Born in Martinique to Haitian parents who then emigrated to the United States, the forties worked on the two campaigns of Barack Obama (2008 and 2012) then that of Joe Biden in 2020 before joining his team at the White House.
Karine Jean-Pierre has often explained how much the journey of her family, emblematic of the “American dream”, had been decisive for her career. She grew up in New York, where her father worked as a taxi driver and her mother as a home caregiver. It was in this city that she graduated from the prestigious Columbia University before taking her first steps in politics and then becoming a figure in the associative world.
The new spokesperson for the White House is also campaigning to break down prejudices in terms of mental health: she recounted having been the victim of sexual assault in her childhood, and having suffered from depression.
In a book published in 2019, she spoke of the “pressure of success that comes with growing up in an immigrant family”. “This pressure became so great, and my sense of failure so strong, that I thought my family would be better off without me. I tried to kill myself, ”said Karine Jean-Pierre in a post published on the site of the MSNBC channel, for which she worked as a consultant. “My journey to being accepted by those I love, and to accepting myself, has not been easy, but it has been worth it. No matter where you are, I see you, we see you and we celebrate you,” she wrote on Twitter in June 2021 to mark Gay Pride.