Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) denied that she made calls to coordinate an effort to pressure President Joe Biden into dropping out of the 2024 race.
Journalist Lesley Stahl grilled Pelosi on the topic during an interview for CBS that aired weeks after Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be his successor.
“Please tell us what you told President Biden to persuade him to step aside,” Stahl said.
“I’ve never shared any conversations with a president of the United States publicly, no,” Pelosi replied.
“It’s said that he’s furious at you,” Stahl said. “Is he?”
Pelosi shot back, “Well, he knows that I love him very much.”
After a poor debate performance, Democrats increasingly urged 81-year-old Biden to exit the 2024 race amid concerns about his age, mental health, and electability.
CNN reported that Pelosi privately told Biden that polls showed he could not defeat former President Donald Trump and that he could hurt other members of his party in down-ticket races if he did not bow out.
“I understand that you don’t want to own this,” Stahl said. “But it is so well-reported that you were the leader of a pressure campaign.”
“No, I wasn’t a leader of any pressure party,” Pelosi said. “Well, let me say things that I didn’t do. I didn’t call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to him, ‘I never called anybody.'”
She continued, “What I’m saying is, I had confidence that the president would make the proper choice for our country, whatever that would be, and I said that. ‘Whatever that is, we’ll go with.'”
Stahl also asked Pelosi if she had seen a “decline in” Biden and whether she thought he needed to step aside.
“No,” Pelosi said. “My whole point was, whatever he decides, but we have to have a more aggressive campaign.”
Harris, who formally entered the 2024 presidential race after receiving Biden’s endorsement, clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination on Friday.
Polls conducted in the past few weeks have shown, on average, a close race between Harris and Trump in a general election face-off.
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