Jean-Pierre: 'If you're not white, male, straight, or wealthy you're under attack'

When Karine Jean-Pierre replaces Jen Psaki as the Biden administration’s newest press secretary, she will make history in Washington by becoming the first-ever Black and first openly gay person to serve in the position.

But the 47-year-old Columbia grad has made a name for herself in Washington by calling out what she perceives as racism in America and priding herself in being “everything that Donald Trump hates,” Breitbart reported.

In a 2019 interview with PBS’ Bonnie Erbé, Jean-Pierre said, “I just think that America has a really big problem with race. And it’s very real and we have yet to deal with it.”

After former President Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, the incoming press secretary spoke about the political implications of the GOP’s victory in her memoirs and subsequent book tour.

“I always say, if you’re not white, male, straight, or wealthy you’re under attack, I mean there is a target on your back,” she said.

She was similarly outspoken throughout his time in office and regularly criticized his policies, including his implementation of a travel ban for Muslim-majority countries.

"I am everything that Donald Trump hates," she said in 2018. "I'm a black woman. I'm gay. I am a mom. Both my parents were born in Haiti, and they came here for the American dream."

Later, after the former president referred to Haiti and a group of developing nations as “shithole countries,” Jean-Pierre used her platform while giving a speech at the University of Michigan to say she was tired of his “immigrant bashing” and “homophobia.”

But Jean-Pierre has perceived racism in Washington since long before Trump was on the political scene – even while working with some of the city’s most prominent Democratic figures like Sen. John Edward, Rep. Anthony Weiner and President Barack Obama.

“I think when you are a person of color when you are a black woman, you experience it every day,” she said. “It’s as simple as walking into a store and people look at you and wonder do you belong in the store.”

“It happens every, every day,” she added.

With that said, the new White House appointee said she did not blame Trump for American racism.

“What he has done is he has made it blatantly, people are just overt about it in a way that we have never seen before,” she said.

She did feel confident, however, that many of the Republicans who have run since Trump first entered office were openly racist.

“We saw candidates in this last election, who were proud to be white supremacist, white nationalist, talking about purging, and we need a white power, white America,” she said.

“I mean this is what we were hearing from some of the candidates and they were in the Republican Party.”

Jean-Pierre also called out the current political climate and ““all these horrible ‘isms” she believes popularized during his presidential run.

“Racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny that existed way before Trump got here, and that is something we just have to continue to remember,” she said. “He touched on something that was there, that was very painful and gave it a whole new life in a very public way.”