Nancy Pelosi Grapples With Her Role In Joe Biden’s Decision To Drop Out

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted at a roundtable with reporters Wednesday that she did not lead a behind-the-scenes effort to pressure President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid.

But in an extensive interview, the former longtime House speaker made it clear that Biden’s campaign was failing, that the single most important thing to her is defeating Donald Trump in November — and, in a rare glimpse into how she’s feeling about this process, that perhaps one day she will reconcile with her role in influencing her decades-long colleague, ally and beloved friend to bow out.

“History’s in a hurry. We’re right at the center of it all here,” Pelosi said of the eleventh-hour changes to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. “At some point, I will come to terms with my own peace, with my own role in this.”

Asked if by “peace,” she meant taking credit for reshuffling the Democratic presidential candidate, Pelosi said it wasn’t about credit and pivoted to talking about Biden.

“Joe Biden made the decision for our country,” she repeated. “The credit all goes to him, to evaluate what he was hearing and to make a decision on how to move forward. I think that part of it, all of our goals in this, was to preserve his legacy. A fabulous legacy.”

The interview was originally scheduled for Pelosi to pitch her new book, “The Art of Power.” But in the time between her wrapping up the book in April and her sit-down with reporters came Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, and the intense fallout that led to Biden dropping his reelection bid. Much of Wednesday’s hour-and-a-half-long exchange was inevitably centered on her role in Biden’s decision.

Throughout the conversation, Pelosi said she is laser-focused on Democrats beating Trump, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

“We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory,” the California Democrat said flatly of Biden’s reelection bid.

“My goal in life is that that man would never step foot in the White House again,” she said of Trump later, pounding the table in between every word. “I could not see an unfolding of events that were just putting rose petals in front of him to go there.”

“So it was really, ‘Let’s understand what’s at stake here and make a decision,’” Pelosi added. “I wasn’t a fan of how [Biden’s] campaign was proceeding, no.”

That’s about as close as Pelosi would get to sharing what, exactly, she did to push her party to course-correct. She denied making calls to anyone to pressure Biden to go, though she said she received “hundreds” of calls from concerned Democrats. She denied ever telling Biden to “put Donilon on the phone,” a reference to reporting that she asked the president to get Mike Donilon, his adviser, on the phone when Biden said his polling was fine.

“I didn’t even know what Donilon did,” Pelosi said with a laugh. “I thought he was a speechwriter.”

She didn’t dispute that she talked to Biden directly about his sinking campaign and the need to get more aggressive. She just refused to say what she said on those calls.

“Maybe one of these days I’ll write that,” Pelosi said. “I pray over whether I ever will.”

Though the California Democrat has remained tight-lipped, she is generally seen as a linchpin of her party’s calls for Biden to end his reelection campaign. Her own daughter has brought it up with her — and Pelosi didn’t exactly say it was a horrible thing.

“My daughter Christine, she said to me earlier, ‘You’re the one who gets charged for this.’ I’m like, ‘charged’?” Pelosi said. “‘The anti-Nancy people, they’re charging you with pushing him aside.’ I said, ‘Well, he made his own decision. He’s the only one who can make that decision.’”

“But don’t be dismayed by whoever is charging you with this,” Pelosi continued, relaying what her daughter told her. “Because every place else, on the planes, in the airport and all of it, every place you go, people are like, thank God.”

It’s understandable why Pelosi would want to shield her private talks with Biden. They have known each other personally and professionally for more than 40 years, even before Pelosi joined Congress in 1987. They see eye to eye on countless policy issues, and have been on the same side fighting to make those issues become law. For the first two years of Biden’s presidency, Pelosi was the House speaker and they worked together to pass sweeping legislation on infrastructure, climate and lowering prescription drug costs.

But like the California Democrat said herself, her top priority is defeating Trump in November ― and a Democratic presidential ticket sagging in the polls four months before the election isn’t the way to do it.

Pelosi first made waves on the subject in early July, when she said in an MSNBC interview that “it’s up to the president to decide” whether to stay in the race, a comment that some read as her opening the door for Democrats to go public with concerns about his ability to defeat Trump.

Regardless of whether she was sending a signal to party colleagues, her comments came just before a flood of elected Democrats began publicly calling on Biden to step aside.

“It was not my intention to put him on the spot on the show,” Pelosi said Wednesday. “But, people just, ‘Oh, my God, you gave us space.’”

The two haven’t spoken since Biden dropped his reelection bid on July 21.

Asked if she thinks the president believes that she was behind an effort to push him out, Pelosi rejected the premise of the question.

“There was no effort,” she said. “He may think that my statement unleashed something. I don’t know because I haven’t spoken to him since.”

“But, you just don’t understand, we’ve been friends for over 40 years,” she continued. “We are friends, for a very long time. I love him so much. We pray together. I cry over it. I lose sleep over it, and the rest.

“But, that’s what evolved.”

For all her efforts to keep her conversations with Biden private, Pelosi could not hide her joy over what’s happening on the campaign trail now, with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. The two held their first campaign event together in Philadelphia on Tuesday, and thousands of supporters showed up and lost their minds with excitement.

“Look at the response they are getting. What is more eloquent than what we saw last night in Philadelphia?” Pelosi said, beaming. “The response from … our members in the House, the volunteers, the small-donor contributions and all of the enthusiasm, the hope, the joy, in their districts.”

HuffPost asked Pelosi point-blank if she’s ever said to Biden — not just as a longtime colleague who is proud of his legacy but as a friend who genuinely cares about him — that she believed the best way for Democrats to defeat Trump was for the president to step aside and clear the way for a different candidate.

“I won’t answer that question” is all she said.

“One of these days, maybe, it’ll all fade away,” Pelosi said, trailing off. “It won’t matter anymore.”