Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists she never told President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, despite multiple media reports claiming otherwise.
Yet Pelosi — who has known the president since the early 1980s — was convinced Biden was going to lose to former President Donald Trump in November unless major changes were made to the president’s campaign. Pelosi said she told Biden this directly during a call with the president.
“I was really asking for a better campaign. We did not have a campaign that was going to lead us to victory,” Pelosi told reporters during a roundtable to discuss her new book, “The Art of Power.”
However, the four-term former speaker, who has been in Congress since 1987, denied she was behind any anti-Biden effort, although she’s clearly delighted that Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over as the Democratic nominee.
“[Biden] may think that my statement [on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’] unleashed something,” Pelosi said, referring to a critical appearance on a popular show watched by the president.
Pelosi asserted during that high-profile July 10 interview that “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.”
Biden, of course, was already running for reelection. So Pelosi’s comments were seen as encouraging the president to withdraw from a race that he was losing following his disastrous debate performance on June 27.
Here’s more from Pelosi on what happened behind the scenes as Hill Democrats rebelled against Biden:
“I never said ‘Put Mike Donilon on the phone,’” Pelosi added, referring to reports that she asked Biden to put one of his top advisers on the phone during a critical call. Pelosi asserted she wasn’t aware of Donilon’s role inside Biden’s orbit, mistaking him for a speechwriter.
“Nobody has any quote from me about what I said to [Biden] whenever it was,” Pelosi insisted.
Biden withdrew from the race on July 21. As of now, Pelosi and Biden haven’t spoken, she said.
But the California Democrat declared her highest priority is to make sure Trump never returns to the White House. The battles between the two, especially after she returned to the speaker’s chair in 2019 when the Democrats won back the House, dominated Washington.
“My goal in life is making sure that man never steps in office again,” Pelosi asserted, thumping the table repeatedly for emphasis during the roundtable.
In the book, the 84-year-old Pelosi talks extensively about her role as speaker and House minority leader in dealing with Iraq, the 2008 Wall Street bailout, the passage of Obamacare and her explosive dealings with Trump during his presidency, including both impeachments and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Pelosi also discusses the devastating October 2022 attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, at their San Francisco home. A conspiracy theorist broke into the home searching for the then-speaker only to end up viciously assaulting her husband. The attacker was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison on federal charges, and he’s been convicted in a state case as well.
“The attack on Paul caused my family its own deep trauma and my own survivor’s guilt,” Pelosi said in describing the fallout from the horrific incident.
