Karine Jean-Pierre says Biden forgot she was on vacation and called her asking where she was
Story by Graig Graziosi •18h
Last week I was on vacation,Loaded: 11.03%Current Time 0:00/Duration 0:53The IndependentKarine Jean-Pierre says Joe Biden called looking for her and forgot she was on vacation.mp40View on Watch
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre provided some insight into the executive branch machine around Joe Biden, revealing that she is rarely alone, and when she is, her boss might come calling anyway.
The press secretary spoke with Vogue’s The Run Through podcast, which was paired with a recent interview she did in the magazine.
While discussing her life working in the White House, she recalled an incident in which she had taken a vacation and received a phone call from a bewildered Joe Biden asking after her.
Vogue editor Chioma Nnadi asked Ms Jean-Pierre if she ever had the chance to turn off her phone and escape work.
"Do you remember the last time that you were just like, put your phone in the other room?” Ms Nnadi asked.
“No, never done that. And so this is really interesting because I say to people all the time, I’m never by myself. It is rare that I am by myself,” Ms Jean-Pierre replied.
She said that while her chances to get away are rare, she did take a vacation last week to visit with her family.
“It was actually really lovely. Slept in a little bit. And there was one of the days where the president called me and he was looking for me. So he called. He called me on my phone and I was not looking at my work phone. And all sudden I got a call in my personal phone and my assistant was like, ‘Hey, the president is looking for you.’ And I was like, Oh, I guess he wouldn’t know that, you know, who’s on vacation,” she told Vogue.
Passengers on a Delta flight were sequestered on a Portuguese island for 12 hours after an emergency landing, with no food or explanations, while airport employees told them they should be grateful that their plane hadn’t fallen into the sea.
The flight, which was scheduled to travel from Ghana to New York, was suddenly diverted to Terceira Island in Portugal. Delta officials said that the delay was caused by a "mechanical issue with a backup oxygen system," according to Insider.
In a video shared by one passenger on X, an airport employee told the passengers that they should not “start a revolution.”
“This female rep told us we should be grateful that they allowed us to be here, and our plane didn’t crash in the sea,” the passenger tweeted.
Nana Asante-Smith, who was on the flight, shared her experience in a Facebook post, where she described feeling “abandoned” by Delta and mistreated by employees at the Portuguese airport.
“Understand me clearly and unequivocally when I say that if this situation had befallen over 200+ white passengers flying from a European country, their reality would have been very different from ours,” she wrote.
Asante-Smith said that the passengers were taken to a cordoned-off section of the airport because the people traveling on Ghanaian passports did not have visas to enter Portugal.
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During their sequestration, the passengers had virtually no contact with Delta, according to Asante-Smith.
"We were trying to reach out to Delta during this time, and ascertain what exactly was going on to no avail," Asante-Smith said.
Initially, the passengers were told that they would be fed around noon and that a plane would arrive to take them to Boston by 2:15 p.m.
Later, however, the airport employees said that they would not feed the passengers because the airport had learned that the passengers were fed on the plane, shortly before their 6 a.m. landing.
“In response to this befuddling update, a gentleman asked about complimentary water bottles,” Asante-Smith wrote. “One of the airport representatives … told the gentleman that we could drink water from the bathroom faucets.”
Some passengers were able to purchase food from a cafe, while others received ham sandwiches, juice and cookies after “begging and pleading,” Asante-Smith wrote.
After waiting in the airport for half a day, the passengers were finally able to board a plane to New York. Asante-Smith said that updates on their flight came from a third-party source because Delta was still not communicating with them.
The airline said that they would provide the passengers with refunds, according to Insider.
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