Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said sustaining President Biden’s legacy is at the top of her to-do list when asked if there’s a “way back” to their friendship after the pair stopped speaking when he dropped out of the 2024 race to retain the Oval Office.
“Is there a way back for your friendship?” former Biden administration White House press secretary Jen Psaki asked Pelosi, D-Calif., during a segment of her MSNBC show “Inside with Jen Psaki” that aired Sunday.
Pelosi focused her attention on the generational love her family has for Biden and on sustaining the 46th president’s legacy when answering the question.
“In our family, we have three generations of love for Joe Biden. My husband and I, of course, we’ve known him for a very long time – respect him, love him and Jill. He and Jill are so remarkable, and their family. Our kids have always loved them. I had pictures with him from our children growing up and now our grandchildren growing up,” she said.
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“But the most important thing we have to do is to win the election, just to sustain his legacy and to have the legacy be to do even more in the presidency and the vice presidency of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” Pelosi continued.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month in a social media message posted to his X account on a Sunday afternoon. He exited the race as pressure from elected Democrats and traditional Democratic allies in the media began calling on the president to pass the mantle to another candidate following his disastrous debate performance against former President Trump in late June. The debate performance opened the floodgates to criticisms that Biden’s mental acuity had slipped.
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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has denied speculation that she helped lead a coup to pressure Biden to exit the race. (Screenshot)
Dozens of members of Congress began publicly thanking Biden for his work in the White House and decades in public office while calling on him to pass the torch to another candidate. Biden made the announcement just more than a week after an assassination attempt on Trump’s life during a rally in Pennsylvania and just days after the Republican National Convention wrapped up in Milwaukee, where Trump was certified as the Republican Party’s nominee last month.
Amid the speculation that Biden would drop out, the Associated Press reported that leaders within the Democratic Party such as former President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Pelosi were reportedly working in the background to encourage Biden to drop out due to concerns he could not defeat Trump.
President Biden kisses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during an Affordable Care Act event in the East Room of the White House, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Pelosi notably publicly suggested before Biden dropped out of the race that the president’s previously adamant resolve to remain in the running was not his final decision. The former speaker of the House has since denied speculation that she helped lead a coup to pressure Biden to exit the race.
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Pelosi revealed earlier this month that she has not spoken to Biden since he dropped out.
“Is everything OK with your relationship?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Pelosi during an interview this month.
“You’d have to ask him,” Pelosi answered. “But I hope so.”
Biden admitted in an interview that aired Sunday that pressure from his Democratic colleagues, including name-dropping Pelosi, contributed to his ultimate decision to drop out of the race.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. 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 – why did – and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” Biden told CBS News’ Bob Costa in an interview that aired Sunday.
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“The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, it would have been down to the wire,” Biden added.
Pelosi continued in her interview with Psaki that she was not impressed with Biden’s campaign and its shot at winning re-election when squaring up against Trump at the polls in November, while praising Biden as a “preeminent” and “consequential” president.
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“I wanted the decision to be a better campaign so that we could win. I did not think we were on a path to victory. So that was really more the thing. He made his decision that that would be accomplished by him stepping aside,” she said.
Following Biden dropping out of the race, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his place. Harris has since secured the Democratic Party’s nomination, and named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.