Pelosi on Biden: ‘We Did Not Have a Campaign That Was on the Path to Victory’

The Washington Post / Paul Kane

15:33 JST, August 8, 2024

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) said that she joined the effort to convince President Biden to abandon his reelection bid because the president’s campaign was losing badly and placing “rose petals” on the path to a victory by former president Donald Trump.

“Now I was really asking for a better campaign. We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory. Members knew that in their districts,” the former House speaker told a small group of reporters during an interview Wednesday promoting her new book.

In her most extensive remarks yet about the political earthquake over the last five weeks, Pelosi said that Biden’s June 27 debate debacle and the aftermath revealed two troubling signs making it all but inevitable that Trump would return to the White House: The president was performing poorly as a candidate and his campaign operation was also flawed.

“My goal in life was that that man would never set foot in the White House again,” she said of Trump, pounding the table nine times for emphasis and to explain why she acted. “And I could not see an unfolding of events that were just putting rose petals in front of him to go there.”

Pelosi declined to go into any specifics about her conversations with Biden or other senior Democrats following the debate, sticking to previous assertions that she did not lead any effort to oust Biden after a crescendo of Democratic elected officials questioned the president’s ability to win his reelection race. But she acknowledged that she counseled many lawmakers and other Democrats who desperately wanted to see a change at the top of the ticket.

“I didn’t make one call. I did not make one call. People called me – hundreds,” she said.

Her message to these Democrats was to flood Biden’s top advisers with their complaints. “I spoke to close friends or whatever, and said the same thing: Whatever you have to say, say to them. I’m not your messenger,” Pelosi said.

Asked whether she ever directly told Biden that he needed to step aside or else Trump would win, she demurred.

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

The White House declined to comment on Pelosi’s remarks.

Pelosi’s role in the three-week drama over whether Biden would step aside was carefully parsed and studiously watched by Democrats of every rank – even though she is no longer House speaker, she commands great respect not only in the halls of the Capitol but also as a Democratic Party power broker. Her July 10 appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” prompted many in Washington to believe that Biden was reconsidering his vow to stay in the race, and the political world paid heed when Pelosi told some California lawmakers that Biden’s time in the race may be short.

But it’s only since she began promoting “The Art of Power,” her book recounting key moments during 20 years as the House Democratic leader, that Pelosi has, little by little, elaborated on the events that led to Vice President Harris as the party’s new nominee.

Pelosi acknowledged that “Morning Joe” appearance prompted rank-and-file Democrats to believe she had reopened the matter for discussion.

“It was not my intention to put him on the spot on the show,” Pelosi said, explaining their belief that she gave them room to challenge Biden. “Oh my God, you gave us space, you gave us space.”

Within a week of that interview, about two dozen Democratic members of Congress called for Biden to bow out, with many more conveying their concerns privately.

“He may think that my statement unleashed something – I don’t know, because I haven’t spoken to him since,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi said she used her TV appearance to channel the anger over Biden’s letter two days before to every Democrat on Capitol Hill, in which he defiantly said he was running and essentially ordered lawmakers to fall in line.

“The letter wasn’t well received in Congress, I don’t know if you know that,” Pelosi said. “It was not well received. I don’t even know who wrote it. Like, what?”

Pelosi said she now goes weeks without talking to Biden since she stepped out of House leadership at the end of 2022.

Biden and Pelosi first met in 1983 at a California Democratic Party event honoring her tenure as state party chair. They bonded over their shared Catholic faith, rising through the corridors of Washington power without Ivy League educations and similar political values.

She acknowledged that last month’s turn of events has created personal pain in a more than 40-year friendship.

“So 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,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi took a dismissive attitude toward one of Biden’s longest-serving confidants, Mike Donilon, who has served as his presidential adviser, advertising script writer and top speechwriter. She denied press accounts that she and Biden had a talk in which they disputed polling data and suggested he put Donilon on the phone to go through the granular details.

“I didn’t know what Donilon did over there. I get the brothers mixed up, as a matter of fact,” she said, referencing his brother, Tom Donilon, who has served as a foreign policy adviser to three Democratic presidents.

“I didn’t even know what Donilon did. I thought he was a speechwriter,” she said. “Yeah, I thought he was a speechwriter. Isn’t he a speechwriter?”

Pelosi said that she had advised Biden months ago not to debate Trump at all. She said she feared that the ex-president would turn the debate into “doggy doo” with so many misstatements that Biden wouldn’t look good.

“I want to go onstage. I can handle this,” Biden told her, according to Pelosi’s account Wednesday.

“I know you can handle it,” she responded, noting that Trump skipped debates in the GOP primary. “Why should you debate him?”

“He wanted to do it, he felt confident,” she said.

On the day of the debate, she told other Democrats that they should expect “the Joe Biden of the State of the Union address,” the successful March speech to Congress that boosted their spirits.

Instead, she said, “Right away there was something disconcerting or concerning.”

Pelosi found what she described as the wanness of his face to be troubling. She did not expect to see such a poor performance given her interactions with him this year.

“I mean, I was shocked the night of the debate, I was shocked. Because I never saw that,” she said. “And everybody said: Well, you must have seen that – well, no, I didn’t see it.”