Ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has openly doubted whether President Biden wrote the letter he sent to Democrats last month insisting he was “firmly committed” to staying in the race.
Biden, 81, sent the missive to congressional Dems to try to put to rest any notion that he’d exit the race over widespread concerns about his mental acuity after his June 27 debate performance against GOP foe Donald Trump. Two weeks later, Biden dropped out.
“I didn’t accept the letter as anything but a letter,” Pelosi told New York Times‘ columnist Ezra Klein in an interview last week. “I mean, there are some people who are unhappy with the letter.
“Let me say it differently. Some said that some people were unhappy with the letter. I’ll put it in somebody else’s mouth. It didn’t sound like Joe Biden to me. It really didn’t,” she said.
Two days after Biden sent the letter, Pelosi (D-Calif.), 84, turned heads with an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” rumored to be one of the president’s favorite political programs.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said on the program — even though Biden had just insisted through the letter that he was still in the race. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
Asked about the discrepancy between her comments and Biden’s letter, Pelosi replied at the time, “Whatever he decides, we go with.”
Some observers surmised that Pelosi’s remarks on that show were intended to send a message of some kind to the president to throw in the towel. Other commenters such as David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, suggested it gave Democrats “space” to revolt against Biden.
Pelosi has claimed she merely went on the show to promote Belarusian dissident politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Pelosi also has regurgitated her well-worn defense that she merely sought a winning presidential campaign, telling the New Yorker that she had “never been that impressed with [Biden’s] political operation.
“I wanted to see a campaign that could win. Because I had made a decision that I stayed in Congress to defeat what’s-his-name, because I think he is a danger to our country,” Pelosi reflected, referring to former President Donald Trump.
Beyond her public statements, several of Pelosi’s key allies such as Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) joined the rebellion against a Biden re-election bid.
At one point behind the scenes, Pelosi grilled Biden about polling data indicating he couldn’t win the presidential election, and when he disputed that, she had him put his longtime adviser Mike Donilon on the phone, CNN reported.
“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a Democrat who had knowledge of the private conversation told Politico. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”
Biden’s longtime former adviser, Anita Dunn, who has since departed the White House, appeared to take a subtle swipe at Pelosi in a recent interview.
“The task in front of us is to win this election and to not let Donald Trump become president again and to win the House of Representatives, which, had certain leaders in 2022 done a slightly better job, maybe we would control today, but we don’t,” she told Politico’s “Playbook Deep Dive” podcast.
“That is the job ahead of us,” Dunn said. “And it’s critical because, as the president has said, this country is at an inflection point.”
Biden himself is rumored to be “furious” with Pelosi. He name-dropped her in an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning” that just aired.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races,” he explained during the interview.
“And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”
Pelosi has been adamant that she “never called one person” — instead saying people called her — during the revolt against Biden.
“People were calling me saying that there was a challenge there. So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign or what would come next,” she admitted to the New Yorker.
Pelosi and Biden have not spoken since at least between Biden’s July 21 announcement about withdrawing from the race and the start of last week, according to Pelosi. It is unclear if they’ve talked since.
For her part, Pelosi has seemingly been trying to mend fences with him, hailing him in public as a “consequential” president and arguing that he deserves a spot on Mount Rushmore.
“I hope so,” she told the magazine when asked if their decades-long relationship could survive. “I pray so. I cry so.”
