Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who served under President Joe Biden, argued that the messaging problems currently facing President Donald Trump’s White House are similar to those the Biden administration White House endured.
Jean-Pierre wrote a guest essay in the New York Times on Friday, arguing that the Trump administration is facing affordability and age-related messaging struggles similar to the challenges the Biden White House faced.
“The Trump White House should realize that over the next two years, there will be only more, not less, scrutiny when the president appears to drift off during meetings, is cagey about the results of his medical exams or goes on one of his erratic, late-night social media screeds,” Jean-Pierre wrote in the piece.
“His communications team should know by now that the prices at the pump and the self-checkout line are undefeated,” she continued.
In the piece, Jean-Pierre discussed the struggles she says the Biden administration had in making the public receptive to positive messaging about Biden’s aging and about the state of the economy. She argued that in each administration’s conversations about the president’s age and affordability, “when leaders neglect lived experience, the message collapses.”
“Mr. Biden repeatedly talked of growing the economy ‘from the middle out and the bottom up,’ but that mantra ultimately didn’t resonate,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “Mr. Trump’s refrain that we’re the ‘hottest country anywhere in the world’ is a no-sale, both because the facts really aren’t on his side and because he’s barely acknowledging Americans’ legitimate economic worries.”
Affordability has been a major topic of the 2026 midterm elections, with Democrats particularly homing in on rising gas prices and tying them to the war with Iran.
Republicans and the Trump administration have pointed to the administration’s success in passing the tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, tying that tax relief and points such as the Trump Accounts for children to their messages on affordability. But Trump has often dodged the affordability issue, famously calling it a “hoax” and saying he has “won” the issue. As the war in Iran heads into its eighth month ahead of the general election, several midterm candidates have called for the war to end on affordability grounds.
Jean-Pierre wrote that the Trump White House is missing the writing on the wall with its affordability messaging, as the Biden White House did with Biden’s age and the economy. She said its messaging ultimately hurt both Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran for president in 2024 after Biden dropped out following a bad debate performance that sparked more serious concern about his age. Biden was 81 at the time of the debate and 82 when he left office.
“We learned that lesson with the economy and again with the debate around Mr. Biden’s age,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “Looking back, we misread the public mood, thinking the age conversation would fade. At best, my responses from the podium about Mr. Biden’s age failed to put out the fire; at worst, they fueled it.”
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Trump turned 80 in June, and his doctor wrote in his last medical report that he was in “excellent health.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the White House for comment.
