On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to discuss the future of the Democratic Party, the presidential race, and President Joe Biden. During the discussion, Pelosi was asked whether there was any resentment between herself and the Biden camp, to which she let slip that she “had to do what [she] had to do.”
“I know it was very difficult for him. That’s been made very clear by some of his top aides like Anita Dunn and Ron Klain. And there does seem to be…even though Anita Dunn said earlier today, ‘Nobody wants to have a fight with Nancy Pelosi at this time.’ It does seem like there’s some residual bad blood or resentment, and I am wondering if you have spoken to him and what your response is to that?”
“Sometimes you just have to take a punch for the children,” Pelosi said. “I had to do what I had to do. He made the decision for the country. My concern was not about the president. It was about his campaign. As he has seen the exuberance, the excitement that has come forth in our country.” The former speaker then cited a recent event she held with an Illinois congressman that brought in 1,100 campaign volunteers as evidence that the Democrats are energized to win the White House and Congress.
The likely resentment between Biden and Pelosi coincides with a recent report from POLITICO that explained that Biden still had misgivings about Pelosi’s push to get him out of the race. According to sources close to the president, Biden views Pelosi as “ruthless” and is willing to sacrifice personal relationships that have lasted decades to ensure that the Democratic Party can survive the upcoming election and prevent Donald Trump from obtaining a second term. In a recent interview, the president told CBS News about the pressure he was feeling from congressional Democrats, like Pelosi, to exit the race. “And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Biden said. “You’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say, why did so — and — and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”
Biden’s close advisors also believed that if Biden decided to stay in the race past July 21, then Pelosi would be even more forceful with her demands that he leave by possibly publicly making it known that she believed he couldn’t defeat Trump in November. She has asserted that she didn’t make any phone calls to Democrat members about the president during the weeks after the debate but did take phone calls from members asking for advice. “I wasn’t the leader of any pressure,” Pelosi claimed in a recent “CBS Sunday Morning” interview. “Let me say things 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. 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.”
While the former speaker has adamantly denied her involvement in forcing Biden out, she has attempted to get back in his good graces through flattery. In various interviews to advertise her new book, “The Art of Power,” Pelosi has expressed her support of President Biden and his agenda, going as far as suggesting that Biden should be added to Mount Rushmore. “He was in a good place to make whatever decision, top of his game. Such a consequential president of the United States., a Mount Rushmore kind of President of the United States,” she said.
