- Pelosi reportedly played a major role in urging Biden to withdraw. She keeps downplaying it.
- But she's not hiding her skepticism of his campaign's shortcomings.
In recent days, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi has begun to open up about her views on President Joe Biden's decision to step aside.
That includes a rather blunt assessment of his political operation, despite her decades of friendship with the president himself.
"I've never been that impressed with his political operation," she told The New Yorker. "They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain't happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The President has to make the decision for that to happen."
It's been widely reported that Pelosi played a major role in Biden's fateful decision to withdraw from the 2024 race. The New York Times has reported she told him directly that he had little path to victory following his disastrous debate performance, and that Biden himself viewed Pelosi as a "main instigator" of the effort within the party to convince him to step aside.
But Pelosi has downplayed all of that, declining to speak about her own private conversations with Biden while insisting that she did not coordinate any broad effort.
What's clear is that Pelosi did make at least one fateful move: Declaring in a "Morning Joe" interview that Biden had to make a decision about continuing his campaign, even after he had already said he would remain in the race. That interview reopened a conversation within the party that seemed to have been clamped down just one day earlier.
"I didn't plan to do that," Pelosi told The New Yorker. "In fact, if I did, I probably would've worn a different suit or something, because I didn't look too professional."
Pelosi also said she hopes her relationship with Biden, which has spanned over 40 years since she was the chair of the California Democratic Party, can remain intact in the wake of Biden's decision.
"I hope so," Pelosi said. "I pray so. I cry so."