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karine jean-pierre
Former Biden Press Secretary, Who Defended Gaza Genocide, 'Very Proud of Everything' She Did
"One of the most disgusting things you'll see today, but also extremely revealing," one critic said of Karine Jean-Pierre's appearance on MSNBC.
Oct 27, 2025
Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said over the weekend that she's "very proud of everything" she did during her tenure as a spokesperson for the Biden administration and would not "take anything back," despite spending more than a year defending US support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
"Obviously, what's happening is heartbreaking," Jean-Pierre said of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza when pressed on the issue during an appearance on MSNBC. She went on to express hope for a lasting ceasefire and long-term peace agreement.
"But I didn't make policy," she added.
Acknowledging that "we did not get everything right," Jean-Pierre said unequivocally, "I was very proud of everything that I did."
"I woke up every day as a Black woman who is queer... No one had ever seen someone like me at that podium standing behind that lectern," she said. "It was an honor and a privilege."
Watch:
This is one of the most disgusting things you'll see today, but also extremely revealing.@AymanM asks former White House Press Secretary Jean-Pierre if she regrets defending Biden’s Gaza policy (blind support and for Israel's genocide).
She first tries to explain it away by… pic.twitter.com/AzrHRVfCkj
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) October 26, 2025
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, called Jean-Pierre's interview "one of the most disgusting things you'll see today, but also extremely revealing."
"She uses the identity card to make genocide apologism permissible," Parsi wrote on Sunday. "In Jean-Pierre's world, her identity gives her the license to support genocide without regret."
Jean-Pierre is making the media rounds as she promotes her new book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, in which she explains her decision to exit the Democratic Party.
As Washington Post book critic Becca Rothfeld noted in a scathing review, Jean-Pierre did not cite the Biden administration's steadfast support for Israel's decimation of Gaza as among the reasons she ditched her former party.
"Jean-Pierre's central complaint boils down, more or less, to a vague sense of personal grievance. The Democrats were mean to [President Joe] Biden, her boss; they were mean to her personally," Rothfeld wrote. "Jean-Pierre sums up her complaints when she writes that she's 'exasperated with the shady way Democrats do business'—but not, we may presume, with the business itself."
Part of that business under the Biden administration was providing material and diplomatic support to Israel as it waged all-out war on the Gaza Strip following the deadly Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
As chief spokesperson for the Biden White House, Jean-Pierre stood before the press and the global community and defended the administration's support for Israel's assault while criticizing international efforts to pursue accountability for Israeli leaders, as well as efforts by US lawmakers to halt the flow of weaponry used to massacre Palestinians indiscriminately.
"We strongly oppose this resolution," Jean-Pierre said last November when asked about a Sen. Bernie Sanders-led push to block US bomb sales to Israel.
"We are very committed to Israel's security," Jean-Pierre added. "That has been ironclad."
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Tlaib Slams White House for Criticizing Cori Bush's Vow to Fight AIPAC
One observer predicted that one day, Bush will "be remembered for valiantly standing up for the rights of Palestinians when too many still did not have the political courage to do so."
Aug 08, 2024
U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday ripped the White House for admonishing Rep. Cori Bush's vow to fight the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after the powerful lobby group spent millions of dollars to unseat the Missouri Democrat for opposing Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
AIPAC's dark money arm, United Democracy Project (UDP), spent $8 million in support of Bush's opponent, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, in the second-most expensive House race ever. UDP spent $15 million to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), another "Squad" member who has criticized Israel's war on Gaza. AIPAC has vowed to spend $100 million to unseat progressive lawmakers—many of them Black and brown—who it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.
In a defiant concession speech on Tuesday night, Bush declared, "AIPAC, I'm coming to tear your kingdom down!"
"All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid," she added.
Asked Wednesday if President Joe Biden had any opinion regarding Bush's remarks, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre—who in 2019, before her current job, called AIPAC "severely racist"—linked the congresswoman's speech to last month's attempt to kill former President Donald Trump.
"The president has always been very clear—and very recently, after the assassination attempt of the last president—about lowering rhetoric, right?" Jean-Pierre said. "It is important... that we be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful."
Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress,
responded on social media: "You know what's not helpful? Sending bombs to be used for war crimes and killing thousands of children. You know what's not helpful? Attacking a sitting U.S. congressmember, while the org you are defending is funding anti-abortion and insurrectionists (sic) candidates."
Despite Israeli forces killing nearly 40,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—wounding more than 90,000 others, forcibly displacing around 90% of Gaza's population, and starving children to death with a crippling siege, the Biden administration continues give Israel billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support including multiple United Nations Security Council vetoes.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump, was
interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters during a campaign rally in Detroit, home to one of the nation's largest Muslim communities.
They chanted: "Kamala, Kamala, you can't hide! We won't vote for genocide!"
Harris, staring down the hecklers, replied: "You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking."
According to AIPAC Tracker, Harris, has taken nearly $5.4 million in campaign contributions from AIPAC as either an individual candidate or Biden's running mate.
Leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement—a coalition of pro-Palestine, peace, and progressive groups that urged people to vote "uncommitted" in U.S. Democratic presidential primaries in a bid to pressure the Biden administration to push Israel for a Gaza cease-fire—said they met briefly with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at the Detroit rally.
"The vice president shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo," the group said.
However, Harris' national security adviser, Phil Gordon, said on social media Thursday that the vice president "does not support an arms embargo on Israel" and "will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups."
Early in the war, Bush introduced a cease-fire resolution supported by 18 other House Democrats. This and other pro-Palestine advocacy, including support for an arms embargo, drew the ire of AIPAC and others supporting a war for which Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the World Court. Dozens of other lawmakers have also called for a Gaza cease-fire.
Such opposition to Israeli policies and practices was once all but unimaginable.
"Over the last two decades, we have seen quite a remarkable shift in opinion on this issue among Democrats in particular," Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote for The Guardian on Wednesday. "Numerous public opinion polls all provide evidence of the same trend. Democrats especially, but also Independents, have grown less sympathetic to Israel over time. A Pew poll from March 2023 found that for the first time, Democrats had more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis."
Munayyer continued:
The support for Israel once enjoyed in the U.S., when people took it to be as normal as the sun rising every day, is gone. Maintaining what support is left will require persuasion—which isn't easy given they are trying to persuade audiences to support war crimes—and increasingly coercion. That era of coercion and repression is what we are quickly transitioning to and will shape the years to come, but that too comes with reputational costs for pro-Israel forces and will eventually collapse as well.
"When it does," he added, "voices like Cori Bush's will be commonplace in our political class and she will be remembered for valiantly standing up for the rights of Palestinians when too many still did not have the political courage to do so."
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'We Do Not Support' ICC Probe of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza, Says White House
"ICC warrants against Israel and Hamas will offer the West a choice: Either torpedo the international criminal justice project they have advanced since 1945 for good or hypocritically demand impunity for Israeli war crimes."
Apr 29, 2024
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday reaffirmed the Biden administration's opposition to the International Criminal Court potentially issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top officials related to Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
"Would the U.S. or the White House see any potential arrests by the ICC as an aggravating factor in the negotiations?" one journalist asked about talks to end the bloodshed and free hostages.
Jean-Pierre responded: "So, we've been really clear about the ICC investigation. We do not support it. We don't believe that they have the jurisdiction. And I'm just gonna leave it there for now."
#WATCH | On International Criminal Court's (ICC) investigation into Israel's conduct in Gaza, White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre says, "...We don't believe is in the ICC jurisdiction in this situation. We do not support the investigation. And I think that kind of… pic.twitter.com/du8NpEtLxj
— ANI (@ANI) April 29, 2024
Asked later about President Joe Biden's Sunday call with Netanyahu and whether the U.S. government is involved in any attempts to avert warrants from the Hague-based court, the press secretary echoed her previous comments.
The exchanges followed reporting that the Israeli government, in partnership with the U.S., is "making a concerted effort to head off" possible arrest warrants from the ICC targeting Netanyahu as well as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
Citing two unnamed Israeli officials, Axios reported that Netanyahu on Sunday asked Biden to help prevent the ICC from issuing warrants. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told the outlet that "as we have publicly said many times, the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation."
Neither Israel nor the United States is a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the tribunal, but Palestine accepted its jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed "in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem," in 2015.
The ICC formally launched its war crimes investigation in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2021, long before the IDF began its ongoing retaliation for the Hamas-led attack October 7 on Israel. The probe includes crimes going back to June 13, 2014.
Urging Biden "to intervene as part of the administration's ongoing commitment to Israel," U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Monday declared that "it would be a fatal blow to the judicial and moral standing of ICC to pursue this path against Israel."
Mark Kersten, an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, responded: "Now a Democratic senator is threatening the ICC's very existence if it does what it was created to do: Impartially and independently investigate international crimes, without fear or favor. I hope this grotesque threat and atrocity-denialism is roundly condemned."
Also noting Fetterman's comments, Alonso Gurmendi, a lecturer in international relations at King's College London, said: "They really don't realize just how isolated Western governments are on this. Even among their own populations. This won't be a fatal blow to the ICC. It will relaunch its relationship with the global majority. Fighting this will only isolate and weaken the West further."
In January, the International Court of Justice found that Israel is "plausibly" engaged in genocide in Gaza. As of Monday, the Israeli bombardment and blockade had killed at least 34,488 Palestinians in the Hamas-governed strip, injured another 77,643, left thousands more missing in bombed-out communities, and displaced around 90% of the enclave's 2.3 million people.
Since October, the United States has ramped up its billions of dollars in military support for Israel. The Biden administration has been accused of being complicit in genocide in federal court. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for June.
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