You may be woefully unaware of the starkly striking similarities between 2022 White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and former Queen of France Marie Antoinette, but Jean-Pierre isn’t. Defining herself as “French American,” KJP has more in common with the woman most remembered for admonishing the people starving in the streets of Paris to “Let them eat cake.” Much more.
You see, the wife and queen to France’s Louis XVI became increasingly unpopular with her own people as the monarchy slumped beneath the pressure of a populist revolution in the streets. The once-loyal French subjects saw Queenie as profligate, promiscuous, and sympathetic to France's traditional enemies—including the queen’s native Austria. The French people grew disillusioned with the monarchy, which was embroiled in numerous scandals that eventually gave weight and popular support to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the crown. Most people in the streets viewed France’s mounting financial problems at the time as Queenie’s fault, labeling her Madame Déficit because of her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms offered to the King.
Eventually, events grew so bad that the newly formed constitutional government placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. In August 1792, an attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, where they were held in the Temple Prison. On September 21, 1792, the monarchy was abolished, and Louis XVI was executed by guillotine the following January. Marie Antoinette's trial began in October of that year. She was convicted of high treason by the Revolutionary Tribunal two days later and was executed, also by guillotine, at the Place de la Révolution, amidst the peasants’ shouts of, “Off with her head!”
Now, you might not see much similarity between the deposed and pompous Queen of France in 1793 and the White House press secretary in 2022, but I assure you, it’s there. And it runs deeper than a shared national heritage. It runs all the way from KJP’s open-arms welcome as the first woman of color and an openly LGBTQ activist in 2022, through her bumbling and stumbling along for the next seven months of notes-reading, right up to her “Let them eat cake” moments as her people call for her ouster.
Except that, for KJP, “her people” aren’t the good and noble people of France or even of America but rather those of the press corps whose job, at least nominally, is to ask tough questions and get illuminating responses. Except that in KJP’s case, even when someone actually conjures up the cojones to ask something of relevance (usually Fox News’ Peter Doocy), the secretary snarls in condescension, stutters out some incomprehensible platitude, and clenches her jaw as the steam pours from her nostrils. This, remember, is the woman who once called the Nord Stream 1 Pipeline “Nordstrom.” I personally think she should stick with “Let them eat cake.”
Dumb? You tell me. But not even that condemnation does justice to someone who’s supposed to be acting as the eyes and ears into the oval office. Even the American Press—long removed from that bastion of hard-nosed neutrality upon which it had once prided itself—is beginning to tire of her highness’s high jinks. The New York Post’s David Marcus labeled her on-podium shenanigans “self-righteous.” The Next News Network dubbed her the “most incompetent press secretary in the history of American politics.” Outkick’s Clay Travis called her an “embarrassment.” CNN commentator Scott Jennings summed her up like this: “the ability to look into a camera and just completely and totally lie with a straight face is ... something." Sen. Ted Cruz’s adviser Steve Guess tweeted, "Karine Jean-Pierre is so bad at this” while News Africa reporter Simon Ateb in a statement to the Daily Caller said the press secretary’s actions are “Shameful.” Fox News commentator Dan Bongino added, “She’s just an incompetent liar.”
Perhaps conservative news outlet PJ Media summed up Her Highness’s performance best in declaring, “Another day, another disaster for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Eventually, she is going to burn out on the continual slapstick comedy bits that the press briefings have become. She can only wipe the pie off of her face so many times before she hands in her two weeks’ notice. Then she’ll take a gig with CNN where nobody will ask her anything and she can become the star she was destined to be.”
That’s certainly one possible scenario. But I have another, and I’d like to bounce it off you. Let’s suppose somebody threw a great big party, and nobody showed up. You know, let the White House schedule a “major press conference” to announce the latest bit of drivel posing as policy. Then, the first time Queenie tries to stonewall or ridicule or stutter her way through a reporter’s question, everyone gets up and leaves. And goes back to his or her paper and writes up that story just exactly the way it evolved.
I guarantee you Queenie won’t have to wait long for the revolution. She’ll be gone before the news hits Sleepy Joe’s desk. If ever. Even if not, she’ll be gone. And then, I guarantee you, the next White House press secretary will be someone with a little more integrity—another Tony Snow or Dana Perino or Ari Fleischer? Or someone more along the lines of the great press secretaries of the past, such as Pierre Salinger, Bill Moyers, James Baker, and Larry Speakes? Certainly not KJP or Jen Psaki or George Stephanopoulos.
Could that really happen? Yes, it could. It could, that is, assuming the press corps actually grows up and decides to take its responsibilities to the American public seriously for once in its modern-day life.
The White House needs the press corps. More so than the other way around. In fact, the press would be better served if it went back to being reporters, digging up their own stories, and not gullible dupes gobbling up every lie issued from the pulpit of the last several Democrat administrations. The American public needs the press corps, too. But we need it to be fair and honest and ethical. To ask questions and dig for the answers beneath the answers. And not stop digging until they get them. That’s something this country has been missing for far too many years now. And it’s time to put an end to it.
At least, that’s the way I see it.
And I … am