Karine Jean-Pierre’s ‘tell-some-but-not-all’ memoir

The Karine humiliation routine

The media is piling on former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s “tell-some-but-not-all” memoir Independent. Matt Taibbi called the book “incoherent,” which is to be expected, but check out this from the Washington Post’s reviewer Becca Rothfeld: “It is incredible – and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness – that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.”

KJP then took a call from the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, who’s savaged many intellects far greater than hers. Speaking as a “black woman who’s part of the LGBTQ community,” she literally says, “I did not see anything that would’ve given me concern” about Joe Biden running for president in 2024. “But you watched TV like the rest of us, right?” Chotiner asks, like a normal person.

KJP also writes that “the truth was, I never believed [Kamala] Harris could win,” but then tells Chotiner “the reality of it is that being a Black woman, being Black and being a woman, it’s just tough. It’s hard.” You can almost hear the disbelief in Chotiner’s bold-type responses to her questions.

The fact that the mainstream media – not the right, not the left, but utter normies – are rolling their collective eyes at KJP and Harris on their media tours is a sure sign that we’re done with the identitarian politics of the Obama/Biden era. Aesthetically and intellectually adrift is right. An actual “independent’ would have changed the channel years ago.

On our radar

KPOP TRADE DEAL HUNTERS President Trump continues his Asia trip, heading from Japan to South Korea for a meeting with APEC CEOs.

OH SNAP Food banks are preparing for a rush as federal food aid (SNAP) may run out on Saturday due to the government shutdown.

WHERE THERE’S A BILL Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and longtime environmentalist, said that climate change “would not lead to humanity’s demise” in a memo released today.

Paul Ingrassia lawyers up

You didn’t think we were done with Paul Ingrassia quite yet, did you? After withdrawing his nomination to head the Office of Special Counsel over questionable text messages (apparently a requirement for a young Trumpian striver), Ingrassia has moved on to the “anger” stage on the Kubler-Ross scale. Yesterday in Virginia, Ingrassia and his attorneys filed a $150 million lawsuit against Politico and its reporter Daniel Lippman who, prior to the texting scandal, wrote an article claiming that a former employee had accused him of sexual harassment.

“Paul has never sexually harassed anyone – full stop,” wrote attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik. The attorney also said that Ingrassia has displayed “incredible composure under fire” during the weeks he was nominated and unnominated. Ingrassia was certainly composed enough, Cockburn can see, to pull together a lawsuit attempting to turn Politico into the Gawker Media of 2025. But unless Politico also published a lost Paul Ingrassia sex tape, the same outcome seems unlikely. Note that the lawsuit filing doesn’t include the words, “my client never texted to colleagues that he had a ‘Nazi streak’ – full stop.” Watch this space.

Tucker ‘sorry’ for calling Nick Fuentes ‘gay’

Elsewhere on the further recesses of the right: Nick Fuentes, the 25-year-old founder of the groypers and unlikely leftist heartthrobcontinued his algorithm friendly tour of racy podcasts. After guesting on Patrick Bet-David’s PBD podcast and Red Scare, next up it was Tucker Carlson, a godfather of the New Right with whom Fuentes had recently feuded. Cockburn says “feuded” – earlier in the summer, Tucker branded Fuentes a “weird little gay kid living in his basement in Chicago.” 

Amazing how much can change in a month. “I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way,” Carlson says in this week’s two-hour interview. The pair also apologize for accusing each other of being FBI assets. Isn’t it nice when everyone gets along?

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