White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has ended her relationship with her longtime partner, CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux, according to a new report.
Jean-Pierre, the first openly gay spokeswoman to hold press briefings for a US president, acknowledged the split in a Vogue profile published Thursday, saying she was now “a single mom who is co-parenting” a 9-year-old with Malveaux.
“Our number-one priority is her privacy and to make sure we create an environment that’s nurturing,” Jean-Pierre added of the pair’s daughter, Soleil, but did not remark on the separation.
The 49-year-old White House press secretary met Malveaux at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 during a stint on President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
“We met at a donor party being held in a nightclub,” Jean-Pierre wrote in her 2019 memoir “Moving Forward.” “I know it’s a cliché, but the truth is, I spotted her across a crowded dance floor.”
The two moved in together in 2014 and adopted Soleil, the French word for “sun,” at Malveaux’s prompting later that year, despite Jean-Pierre’s own reservations about becoming a parent.
Having helped raise her younger siblings, she told Vogue that she often views her political work as a refuge “from the responsibilities of home.”
Over the next decade, they rose to become a “power couple” in Washington, DC, according to a People magazine article on Malveaux published days before news broke of their separation.
“Suzanne is a beautiful woman with striking cheekbones and a dazzling smile,” Jean-Pierre also wrote in her memoir. “Suzanne is warm, brilliant, grounded, funny — and supportive of me.”
In an interview with USA Today last year, Jean-Pierre said she had a painful experience coming out to her family as a gay woman, which initially “devastated” her mother but later led to reconciliation.
“My mom loves my partner, my mom loves my kid, and my mom loves me — and has always loved me — but she loves everything about me now,” she told the outlet.
Jean-Pierre is the third woman in the Biden White House to receive fawning coverage from Vogue after similar profiles of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki — which was published days before the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan — and first lady Jill Biden.
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