Rep. Nancy Pelosi was questioned Monday about her role in President Joe Biden opting out of the 2024 contest and whether the two are now on good terms.
On CNN, Pelosi, who said she hasn’t spoken to Biden since he dropped out on July 21, had a somewhat cryptic answer when asked if “everything is okay” in their working relationship.
“You’d have to ask him, but I’d hope so. But he knows—look, I have loved Joe Biden, respected him for over 40 years,” Pelosi told anchor Dana Bash. “I think he has made one of the biggest contributions to our country, to our world, in the shortest period of time of any president you can name.”
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Bash then asked whether Pelosi had a hand in some high-profile Democrats in Congress, like Reps. Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, calling for Biden to step aside. Pelosi, it was reported, was working to get Biden to make that decision, including by telling him that polls indicated that he would lose to Trump.
Pelosi denied involvement when Bash noted that Schiff and Raskin were some of Pelosi’s allies.
“I have tons of allies,” she said. “No, I had nothing to do with that, and if you ask them, it’s almost insulting to them because they’re formidable figures in the Congress of the United States. They make their own judgment and their own statement.”
Pelosi has said elsewhere that her persuasion efforts were motivated by the goal of defeating Donald Trump.
On CNN, the former House speaker was also asked about some key moments with the then-president that she writes about in her new book, “The Art of Power.” Before Trump’s first impeachment, for instance, Pelosi writes that he became “increasingly whiny” while insisting during a phone call that ‘“there’s no reason to impeach me.’”
“He was saying, ‘It’s a perfect call. It’s a perfect call,’” Pelosi told Bash. “And I was saying, ‘It’s a perfectly clear call. And we will be going forward.’”
