White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she’s split from her longtime partner and is now a single parent, telling a magazine she’s most likely to be remembered for a viral video and not her role as the president’s spokeswoman.
Ms. Jean-Pierre told Vogue magazine in a profile released online Thursday that she is no longer in a relationship with former CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux and is now a single mother who co-parents her 9-year-old daughter.
The 49-year-old gave a wide-ranging interview about her role as President Biden’s chief spokeswoman and her prior job with the progressive group MoveOn, where she became the subject of a viral video she believes will follow her to her grave.
“It’s going to be on my tombstone,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said in the profile.
The video from 2019 shows Ms. Jean-Pierre jumping to the defense of then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Ms. Jean-Pierre was acting as a moderator for a discussion on the gender gap when a protester rushed the stage and grabbed the microphone out of the senator’s hand.
The next day, Ms. Harris called her to see how she was faring, to which she replied, “Please get security.”
In the profile, Ms. Jean-Pierre talked about the moment in 2022 when she was offered the job of White House press secretary. She is the first Black woman and the first openly gay person to have that job.
She told the magazine that it “happened fast” and that she and Mr. Biden “had 20 seconds together.”
“You’re kind of like, ‘Were there supposed to be fireworks happening? Mood music?’” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “There was none of that.”
Ms. Jean-Pierre was born to Haitian parents in Martinique, France. The family moved to Paris and then New York where she grew up on Long Island.
She told the magazine that sharing her own opinions “is not what I signed up for,” but she said that sometimes certain topics make it harder than others to remember that.
Haiti’s political challenges, she said, are “one of the issues that’s toughest for me.”
“I signed up to speak on behalf of this president,” she said in Vogue. “That’s why he selected me.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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