Karine Jean-Pierre saw her political career flash before her eyes.
She knew she had to do something.
And Karine Jean-Pierre panicked when Barack Obama showed up and something awful happened.
Jean-Pierre scrambles to keep Obama meeting with reporters off the record
Former President Barack Obama was traveling aboard Air Force One.
Obama was ready to sit down with his fan club, otherwise known as the White House Press Corps.
But an audio recording of the event showed Jean-Pierre flying in after just 12 seconds to cut off anyone from recording what the former President had to say by declaring the session “off the record.”
“Off the record! Off the record! Off the record!” Karine Jean-Pierre instructs the press as the audio stream begins aboard AF1.
OBAMA: “How’s it goin, everybody!?”
*audio feed cuts* pic.twitter.com/Rg4dABKPMR
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 28, 2024
The last thing Jean-Pierre wanted was reporters pressing Obama about recent reports that he met privately with President Joe Biden about the state of his re-election campaign.
Obama reportedly believes Biden is losing and can’t win without Obama’s help.
“Obama has made clear to associates in recent months that he believes Biden’s intensifying re-match with Donald Trump in November will be incredibly close, and that the 2024 election marks an “all-hands-on-deck” moment, people familiar with his thinking told CNN. To that end, his return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last week was largely a working visit,” CNN exclusively reports.
Obama reportedly never had much faith in Biden.
Before Biden entered the 2020 race, Obama offered a withering assessment of Biden’s political talents and chances to win a General Election with Politico reporting that he told another Democrat, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”
Democrats struggle with political optics
The split-screen moment for Democrats was bad enough.
Biden was on the way to New York with Obama to join fellow former President Bill Clinton and an all-star cast of celebrities for a fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall that was expected to rake in a record $25 million haul.
“The three presidents will sit for a conversation with late-night host Stephen Colbert. Tickets for the fundraiser range from $225 to $500,000. Some of the highest-dollar guests will have their photographs taken with the three presidents by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz,” CNN also reported.
“More than 5,000 donors will attend the event, which also includes celebrities like Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Lea Michele,” CNN also reported.
While Biden rubbed elbows with deep-pocketed, left-wing elites, former President Donald Trump was also in New York.
But Trump was in New York to attend the wake for slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, who was murdered during a “routine traffic stop” by a career criminal with 21 arrests on his record, who was continuously let off the hook and released back into the streets under Democrats’ woke policies.
The Diller family invited Trump to attend the wake, which he did to show that the American people stood with the police against Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies.
President Trump outside of fallen NYPD officer Jonathan Diller’s funeral: “The police are the greatest people we have… There’s nobody like them, and this should never happen.”
— Alex Bruesewitz 🇺🇸 (@alexbruesewitz) March 28, 2024
Obama could make things worse
Obama was sure to face questions about Trump, the fundraiser, his thoughts on Biden’s campaign, and the dueling trips by Trump and Biden to New York.
Anything Obama tells reporters that’s on the record will become the story, pushing the story Democrats want to tell – that the Biden campaign is out-fundraising Trump – out of the headlines.
Even a noted incompetent Press Secretary like Karine Jean-Pierre knew that and got the press to put Barack Obama’s comments off the record in the nick of time.
