Hit the road! Desiree Rogers to resign next month


Na na na na! Na na na na! Hey! Hey! Goodbye! Yet another Chicago failure of this administration is resigning. She can join San Francisco’s Van Jones somewhere, maybe at the Soros funded Center for American Progress. Yes, according to Politco, the White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers who is now infamous for allowing the Salahi’s into the White House State Dinner at “crasher gate” is going byebye. She will leave her post next month. The leading candidate to replace Rogers is Julianna Smoot, currently chief of staff for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, according to a senior administration official. Ron Kirk is yet another famous Obama appointed tax cheat. Kirk was appointed to be Obama’s Trade Representative.

Rogers, who plans to return to the corporate world, became one of the administration’s most high-profile staffers. A friend of both Obamas dating back to Chicago, she appeared in the pages of Vogue, on the cover of the Wall Street Journal magazine and was in the front row during last year’s New York Fashion Week.

But it was a blast of unwelcome publicity — the gate-crashers at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner — that put Rogers into the national spotlight. After Tareq and Michaele Salahi got into the dinner and shook hands with the president, all apparently without an invitation, Rogers’s handling of security for the event came under fire.

Rogers was criticized for failing to post someone from the East Wing at a security checkpoint. The White House defended her, placing full blame on the Secret Service, yet a subsequent investigation led to procedural changes.

When asked if she was hit hard by the resignation, longtime friend and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told POLITICO in an e-mail: “No, it didn’t hit me hard. Desiree never intended to stay more than about a year.”

“She has made a tremendous contribution, and I completely respect her decision to return to the private sector,” Jarrett added.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, blasted the White House in December for declining to have Rogers testify in the congressional probe into the state dinner security breach. King, asked if he will now call Rogers to testify, told POLITICO through his spokesman: “No further comment on Desiree Rogers, I wish her well.”

“We are enormously grateful to Desiree Rogers for the terrific job she’s done as the White House Social Secretary,” the president and first lady said in a statement released by the White House. “When she took this position, we asked Desiree to help make sure that the White House truly is the People’s House, and she did that by welcoming scores of everyday Americans through its doors, from wounded warriors to local schoolchildren to NASCAR drivers. She organized hundreds of fun and creative events during her time here, and we will miss her. We thank her again for her service and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”

In Friday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Rogers told the Obamas “at the beginning of the year it was time to go to back to the private sector.” Rogers was not asked to leave, Gibbs said.

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February 26, 2010 · Filed Under Obama's Cabinet


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