Contrary to popular belief, Desiree Rogers wasn’t fired as White House secretary because of the infamous Salahi couple who crashed President Barack Obama’s first state dinner in November — although that contributed to it.
And it wasn’t Rogers’ seemingly brazen self-promotion while being WH secretary, such as the Vogue Magazine photo spread, replete with priceless jewels dripping from her ears and fingers, the Wall Street Journal cover story and her insistence on a high-profile presence at Fashion Week in New York last year — even thought those were contributory factors.
The truth is that Rogers was given her walking papers after her staff failed to deliver White House Christmas cards to Obama’s biggest political contributors, a practically unforgivable faux pas, Politico.com reports.
The online publication claims that after Rogers’ staff failed to perform this function, “the donors rose up, and that was another reason Desiree got pushed out.”
The combination of prancing in front of cameras and promoting her individual interests while committing numerous blunders made her position under Obama untenable, hostile even. Several reports surfaced that Rogers got into multiple flacks with senior advisor Valerie Jarrett after media hungry flunkies Tareq and Michaele Salahi circumvented Secret Service security checks and WH checkpoints to shake hands with Obama.
The embarrassment was compounded when the Salahis shamelessly revealed they were using their national security breach to actively petition for a coveted spot on the highly-successful Bravo TV franchise Real Housewives — Washington, DC version. —terry shropshire
