Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened to publicly denounce President Biden if he did not give up on his reelection bid, prompting the then-ill president to finally make the “enlightened” decision to give up the race, according to new reports about the final moments of the campaign.
Pelosi sent an urgent message to the 81-year-old president last month, who was recovering from COVID-19 at his Delaware beach house, the people said. He told the Daily Mail.
Speaker Pelosi has threatened to publicly censure her longtime friend and political ally if he continues to ignore strident calls for her to withdraw from the 2024 election due to concerns about her cognitive abilities, four sources close to the campaign told the outlet.
Pelosi threatened to go public with her belief that her Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives would not be able to beat Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, in a rematch and to release damning polling data that supported that belief, the people alleged.
The demands were reportedly so strong that Biden had a “God-awakening” moment, and he and his staff began drafting a letter ending his 2024 campaign, which was released on July 21.
In his first television interview since dropping out of the presidential race and then endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, Biden acknowledged that worried Democrats had pushed him out.
“Many of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I would hurt them in the election,” Biden told “CBS News Sunday Morning,” referring to Pelosi by name.
“I was worried that if I continued the campaign, I would be interviewed about why Nancy Pelosi said this. [something] … And I thought that would be a real distraction,” he added, calling himself a “transition president.”
Pelosi, 84, acknowledged that she had spoken to Biden and received calls from concerned Democrats, many of whom were unhappy about their chances in the 2024 election before Biden dropped out of the race.
A former senior adviser to Biden and now a staffer on Harris’ campaign team said Pelosi was “absolutely” responsible for ousting the president.
“You know, there were some people in the leadership of the party who decided to go public, and that gave permission for other people to go public,” said Anita Dunn, a former senior White House communications adviser. He told Politico.
Dunn also criticized Democrats for ignoring voters who voted for Biden in the primary, calling it “very donor-driven.”
