President Biden all but admitted he was pushed out of the presidential race by Democratic Party elites and specifically name-dropped former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in his first TV interview since the tectonic news last month.
Biden said that Dems in the House and Senate were worried that he’d drag down their chances of being reelected. He said he believed his reelection bid would face too many distractions if he carried on.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he told “CBS News Sunday Morning.”
“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am — it’s hard for me to get out of my mouth,” he went on, adding that it was a combination of those factors and a key priority of “maintaining this democracy” that underpinned his decision.
The incumbent president, 81, faced a public mutiny by numerous Democrats during the aftermath of his shocking debate performance against Trump at the end of June.
After dropping out of the race, Biden promptly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris who has since gained ground against former President Donald Trump in the polls.
Biden did not elaborate on any potential beef with Pelosi during his interview, however, Pelosi was widely reported to have orchestrated the push to oust Biden — a claim she has not exactly denied.
Pelosi (D-Calif.), 84, initially defended Biden the Democratic revolt began among Democrats following the debate. But then the speaker emeritus, who has a reputation for being a ruthless political operator behind the scenes, began to change her tone in public.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” rumored to be one of Biden’s favorite political programs, two days after he penned a letter saying he was “firmly committed” to remaining in the race.
Out of public view, Pelosi pressed Biden about polling data indicating he couldn’t win the presidential election and when he pushed back, she had him put his longtime adviser Mike Donilon on the phone, CNN reported.
“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” one Democrat who had knowledge of the private conversations told Politico. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”
Pelosi has been tight-lipped about the nature of her private conversations and publicly claimed that she merely sought to ensure Democrats had a winning presidential campaign.
“I never called one person. I kept true to my word. Any conversation I had, it was just going to be with him,” she recently told the New Yorker.
But she did admit that people called her during the backlash against Biden.
“People were calling me saying that there was a challenge there. So there had to be a change in the leadership of the campaign, or what would come next,” she added.
As of early this month, Pelosi and Biden still have not spoken to one another. When asked about rumors that the president is “furious” with her, she told “CBS News Sunday Morning” that “He knows that I love him very much.”
The two Democrats have known each other for decades. Beyond her lukewarm public statements to him and behind-the-scenes machinations, many observers noted that key Pelosi allies such as Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), joined the chorus of Democrats pressuring Biden to throw in the towel.
Pelosi has largely sung Biden’s praises since he dropped out, lauding him as a “consequential” president and suggesting that he deserves a spot on Mount Rushmore. Though she did concede that she had “never been that impressed with his political operation.”
Biden still didn’t acknowledge that he was badly trailing Trump in the race, saying that polls indicated a matchup between him and Trump “would have been down on the wire.”
He also and reiterated his excuse of being sick on debate night.
“I had a really, really bad day in that debate because I was sick,” he said.
Biden was flanked by his family after delivering remarks in the Oval Office to the American people about his decision to withdraw from the race.
“My grandchildren call me Pop, my children call me Dad. And they said they were proud and it mattered,” he said.
“Whenever I have a decision that’s really hard to make, I literally ask myself, what a Beau do,” he added about his late son who died of brain cancer in 2015. “He should be sitting there being interviewed, not me. He was really a fine man. You know, Beau was committed to my staying committed.”
The president revealed that he had a conversation with Beau before he died, in which the younger Biden made his father promise to stay engaged with politics.
Biden also fretted that he’s “not confident at all” that there will be a peaceful transition of power if Trump loses the Nov. 5 election. He further revealed plans to join Harris on the campaign trail teasing plans to swing through Pennsylvania with Gov. Josh Shapiro (D).
“I’m going to be campaigning in other states as well. I’m going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most,” he added.
