President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance Friday to announce that his chief spokesman Jay Carney is leaving his post behind the podium. 
 
 Obama called Carney one of his closest advisers and friends at the White House in remarks to the press in the White House briefing room. 
 
 "In April, Jay came to me in the Oval Office and said that he was thinking of moving on, and I was not thrilled, to say the least," he said. "But Jay has had to wrestle with this decision for quite some time." 
 
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 "I will continue to rely on him as a friend and an adviser after he leaves to spend as much of his summer as he can with his kids before he decides what's next for him," he added. "Whatever it is, I know he's going to be outstanding at it." 
 
 Carney, who has served as press secretary for over three years, called holding the job "an honor and a joy for me." 
 
 Obama announced that communications deputy Josh Earnest will take over the job as the president's press secretary. 
 
 "Today the flak jacket is officially passed to a new generation," he said of Earnest. ||||| File: White House press secretary Jay Carney (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) 
 
 President Obama announced Friday that Jay Carney will step down as White House press secretary after more than three years and be replaced by his deputy Josh Earnest, who worked on the Obama campaign in 2008. 
 
 Carney, 49, a former Time Magazine White House correspondent, joined the administration in late 2008 as spokesman for Vice President-elect Biden. He was promoted to Obama's chief spokesman in February 2011, replacing Robert Gibbs. 
 
 Earnest, 39, has been Carney's top deputy and regularly fills in for the press secretary during daily briefings at the White House and aboard Air Force One when the president leaves Washington. Carney said Earnest would travel with Obama to Europe next week, and the press secretary said he would formally leave his job in mid-June. 
 
 Carney cited spending time with his wife, television journalist Claire Shipman, and children as a reason for his departure, but he did not disclose future career plans. Obama made the surprise announcement in the briefing room, cutting off Carney during an answer to a question about Ukraine. 
 
 At Friday's White House news briefing, President Obama joined press secretary Jay Carney to announce that Carney would be leaving his post, to be replaced by deputy press secretary Josh Earnest. (Associated Press) 
 
 "Jay has become one of my closest friends and is a great press secretary and a great adviser," Obama said. "He's got good judgement, he has good temperament and he's got a good heart. And I'm going to miss him a lot. I will continue to rely on him as a friend, an adviser after he leaves to spend as much of his summer as he can with his kids before he decides what's next for him." 
 
 Carney developed a reputation among his former peers as a disciplined and even-tempered spokesman who rarely disclosed news by mistake or made mis-statements that were damaging to the White House. Carney sparred with reporters regularly, as they pressed him on camera to respond to world crises, domestic politics and White House scandals. 
 
 Josh Earnest speaks during the April 4 daily news briefing at the White House . (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) 
 
 Obama recalled Earnest's work on his 2008 campaign, noting that he served as communications director in Iowa. "In that role, you'd find him spending an extra hour or two helping young staffers make phone calls or knock on doors," the president said. "There was no task that was too small, no detail too unimportant for Josh to attend to." 
 
 Earnest is well regarded among White House reporters, and he was long viewed as a likely Carney replacement. Some reporters had speculated last year that Obama might someday replace Carney with Jen Psaki, a former White House deputy communications director and Obama's 2012 campaign spokeswoman who now serves as the State Department spokeswoman. Obama has not had a woman serve in the role of top spokesperson at the White House, although Jennifer Palmieri is the communications director, a top behind-the-scenes position in the press shop. 
 
 "More often than not people say to me, 'You have the hardest job or you have one of the hardest jobs,'" Carney said. "And I'm not saying it's easy every day, but I love it. It's an important interaction that takes place here. It's not always pretty. It could certainly be better. But to be a part of it is an honor and a joy for me. So no matter how tough the briefing is, I walk out of here having been glad to stand here." 
 
 Brendan Buck, former spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boeher (R-Ohio), often sparred with the press secretary, but Friday he wrote on Twitter that Carney had "a great run. Incredibly tough job, and rarely made a misstep." 
 
 RELATED: The Departed -- Carney, Shinseki latest to leave administration ||||| The impropriety displayed on Wednesday by a high school-age intern who dared to ask White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a question relating to the security provided to the family of George Zimmerman knows no bounds. That is apparently the opinion of a number of members of the political press. After an intern had the temerity to ask Carney a question, the political media flew into a tizzy over the presumptuousness of the intern and turned to mocking him and the venue which credentialed him to be in the Briefing Room in the first place. 
 
 
 
 Moments after the event which shall henceforth be known as “Intern-Gate,” POLITICO’s Jennifer Epstein quickly posted a three sentence write up chronicling the incident. A subsequent post from Epstein revealed that the 16-year-old intern, Gabe Finger, asked Carney about the security provided Zimmerman’s family in the wake of the controversial not guilty verdict handed down last Saturday. Carney said that President Barack Obama and the Martin family have called for a non-violent reaction to the verdict. 
 
 “So, they’re on their own?” Finger followed up. 
 
 “You can editorialize all you want, and I’m sure that you will, but that is a ridiculous statement,” Carney shot back. 
 
 The reaction to the question the political press to l’affaire de intern was swift and remorseless: 
 
 In fairness, a handful of members of the political press congratulated Finger on his success at sneaking a question in during the press briefing, but those exceptions merely prove the rule. 
 
 This contempt the reporters and commentators above displayed probably inspired a series of high fives and “attaboys” from some of their colleagues but, from outside The Bubble, the appearance of media elites bristling over gall of an intern for merely asking a question of a government official is not a good look. 
 
 Update: Daily Caller co-founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel released a statement addressing the controversy surrounding “Intern-Gate”: 
 
 Some reporters in Washington are asking why The Daily Caller sent our intern Gabe Finger to the White House press briefing this afternoon. Talk about missing the point. The real question is, why did it take a 16-year-old intern to raise an obvious and important question that the White House press corps should have asked days ago? We don’t care how old Gabe Finger is. It doesn’t matter to us what his credentials are. All we care about is how well he does his job. Today he did it a lot better than most White House reporters. 
 
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– President Obama had a second high-profile departure to announce today: Press secretary Jay Carney is resigning, reports the Washington Post. Obama called Carney one of his closest friends and advisers, notes NBC News. "Today the flak jacket is officially passed to a new generation," he said, referring to Carney's replacement: deputy press secretary Josh Earnest. "I will continue to rely on him as a friend and an adviser after he leaves to spend as much of his summer as he can with his kids before he decides what's next for him," said Obama. "Whatever it is, I know he's going to be outstanding at it." (We're guessing the folks at Morning Joe won't be sorry to see Carney go, with Mediaite noting that they again criticized him this morning for "insulting" reporters at his daily briefings.)