Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was frustrated with many of her fellow top Democrats for failing to push President Joe Biden harder to exit the 2024 race and leaving her as the main catalyst to do so, according to a new book being released later this month.
Pelosi was the key figure in getting Biden to drop his presidential bid earlier this year amid fears that his candidacy would cost Democrats the White House and possibly both chambers of Congress. However, the former speaker was reportedly annoyed that other party leaders were slow to join the chorus calling on Biden to step down.
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“The men were MIA,” one insider told Jonathan Alter in his new book American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial — and My Own. “She wasn’t happy that the only bloody fingerprints on the knife were hers.”
After the fateful debate between Biden and former President Donald Trump on June 27, Pelosi expected Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill, such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would advise Biden to consider dropping out. But those conversations were slow to start, prompting Pelosi to take things into her own hands.
Pelosi went to the White House to visit Biden, opening a channel of communication with the president “with an I’m-here-for-you tone, followed by several phone chats,” according to Alter’s book. But as the polls began to worsen for Biden, the former speaker began making moves “to ease the president of the United States out of power.”
That effort intensified on July 10, when Pelosi told Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that although Biden has been a “great president,” she then said, “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run.”
Of course, by that point, Biden had already decided he was going to run — and he was adamant he would not drop out.
But Pelosi’s comments acted as “an easy-to-decode message” for others to continue pressuring Biden to drop out of the race, prompting calls from figures such as George Clooney and threats of withholding donations from top donors.
By the end of that week, Jeffries and Schumer got more involved, according to Alter, and the top congressional Democrats “made sure Biden saw devastating polls that his top campaign aides had been hiding from him or interpreting with confirmation bias.”
All that pressure began to culminate and reached a breaking point when Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on July 18 — something that many consider to be his “last straw.”
“If the president hadn’t tested positive, he might well have run out the clock, lashing himself to a party that increasingly viewed him as a selfish loser,” Alter wrote. “But with Covid, the endgame began. After denial (on display in interviews) and bargaining (over which polls to believe), Biden’s grief for the death of his presidency finally moved toward acceptance.”
Biden then cut himself off from communication with “almost everyone outside his family” for four days as he weighed the decision. Then, on July 21, Biden announced he would withdraw from the race.
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The news came as a surprise to many, with many of his senior staff hearing the news “only moments before the world did,” according to Alter. Pelosi, for her part, heard the news while volunteering in New Jersey.
The previously unreported details are included in Alter’s book, which is scheduled to be released on Oct. 22.