We’ve been reporting how there’s been a big shake-up over the past few months at the White House, particularly in the communications area.
Jen Psaki, former White House Press Secretary, was one of many changes. She left last month to be succeeded by Karine Jean-Pierre, her deputy. Psaki was joined by Vedant Patel, Assistant Press Secretary (going the State Department), Amanda Finney, Press Office Chief (going the Energy Department), Mike Gwin, White House Rapid Response Director (going the Treasury Department), and Michael Kikukawa (also heading to Treasury). That’s a good chunk of the communications team and came as the media is losing patience with the White House.
The change doesn’t seem to have been for the better so far, as Jean-Pierre keeps having difficulties. They brought in ‘help’ on Wednesday — John Kirby, the new National Security Council coordinator for Strategic Communications but that didn’t seem to help much.
But that’s not the only place where there has been turnover and one senior administration official acknowledged that many aides are “tapped out.”
“It’s been a long few years,” the official said. “The burnout is real. It might not be the ideal time to leave with everything going on, but it’s the right time.”
Official explained that the best time to move is before midterms season. “And then you’re really locked in,” they added.
White House Counsel Dana Remus was the last official to go this week. Stuart Delery, her deputy will replace Remus. Remus had responsibility for things such as helping select federal nominees like Ketanji brown Jackson. If the Republicans win, however, then the White House counsel will have to handle the Congressional probes involving Biden. They are sure to be fast-paced.
Already, the Democrats admit that the wave is coming and they are beginning to investigate.
Former Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), a Biden ally and senior policy adviser at Nossaman LLP, argued that Remus’s departure offers good timing for the White House to prepare for such investigations.
“I think it would be more surprising if she left in the fall. I think that her timing now provides Delery more than ample time to get prepared for the kinds of onslaught they expect from Republicans in the fall,” he said.
The shake-up isn’t good on top of all the bad polling that has left Biden at his lowest average polling number from Real Clear Politics so far: 39.3. It is not something anyone wants to do.
“It doesn’t look good,” said one Democratic strategist. “The perception from the outside is that it’s not the place you want to be. There’s a lot of finger-pointing going around right now. It doesn’t seem like it’s humming the way it should be.”
On top of that, 21 black staffers have left since December, raising concerns about a “Blaxit” from the White House. Cedric Richmond, a former Rep. from Louisiana (D-LA), is perhaps the most important person to go. He’s been replaced by Keisha Lance Bottoms, coming in as a senior adviser to the president for public engagement. He was out the door to the DNC after reporting came out that he called left-wing Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) “f—ing idiots.” The White House called the move a “promotion.”
The announcement of one new person caused a lot of controversy on Thursday. CBS’s Ed O’Keefe announced that Julie Chavez Rodriguez (the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez) would be the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and the “first Latina to ever hold a top West Wing staffing role.”
FIRST @CBSNews: @POTUS Biden is promoting @JulieCR46As a senior advisor and as an assistant to the President, she is the most senior. #Latina to ever serve in a West Wing staff job: https://t.co/gxqhLXuF76
— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) June 15, 2022
That wasn’t true, as Mercedes Schlapp was a senior adviser to Trump, and Cecilia Munoz a senior adviser to Barack Obama. But again this makes one wonder about the journalism here — did Ed O’Keefe just take what the White House likely told him on faith, without even checking? Because that’s what it looks like and his tweet is still up, without any seeming correction.
As they enter the midterms, their instability is going to be a major problem.
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