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In House of Cards, S03E11, Frank attacks Jackie (that her step-children go to private school). This seems to be without any logical reason.

Jackie has proven herself to be loyal as she was attacking Dunbar on all levels in the debate. Also, she seems to be the only one standing behind Frank in the whole campaign. He must have known that he will lose her and her votes to Dunbar if he attacked her.

Why have he done it anyway?

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    Maybe as to not look that he and Jackie have teamed up against Dunbar.
    – Rick Sanchez
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 20:11
  • It has nothing to do with loyalty. Frank is a politician, he does what makes himself look good and throwing Jackie under the bus was the right move for him politically.
    – sanpaco
    Commented Jul 14, 2015 at 19:23

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Jackie has proven herself to be loyal

Jackie had hardly proven herself loyal.

Throughout the whole season it seemed she was on the fence, for example:

  • She sides with the party when they initially withdraw support from Frank's presidential bid
  • She also leaked hints that the party had withdrawn support from Frank
  • She agreed with Dunbar to suspend campaigning due to the hurricane against Franks wishes
  • She was initially hesitant to attack Dunbar's kids and Frank had to talk her into it
  • Jackie explicitly tried to side with Dunbar but Dunbar turned her down, it's unclear if that got back to Frank

A reoccurring theme is that Frank has shown to be highly vengeful and is rarely loyal to those who haven't been unconditionally loyal to him in the past. He threw her under the bus for all the times that she was on the fence, went behind his back, or made him work for her loyalty.

He claimed to Jackie that it was so it wouldn't appear as though they were teaming up on Dunbar, but his explanation was thinly veiled and Frank most likely expected her to see through it and side with Dunbar.

We'll have to wait until Season 4 to see if that works out for Frank, or if his revenge was ill-timed.

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    And in addition to that, he also seemed to feel that Jackie had "lost her teeth" due to her newly found family and thus wasn't as valuable as she might once have been, as he also comments to the audience after his discussion with her before the debate.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 12:41

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