(Saul Loeb/Pool via AP, File)
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) criticized President Joe Biden for delaying his exit from the 2024 presidential race and coronating Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement in a new interview with The New York Times.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” remarked Pelosi during a conversation with the Times‘ Lulu Garcia-Navarro set to be released in full over the weekend. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
She continued:
And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.
The Times noted that Pelosi “went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker,” but Pelosi reportedly played a key role in getting Biden to eventually step aside this summer and trashed his campaign operation once he did.
“I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” she told The New Yorker‘s David Remnick in August. “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.” Around the same time, Pelosi noted that she had not spoken to Biden since he made his decision.
CNN reported that Biden was “seething” at Pelosi as he grappled with calls for him to drop out from other members of Congress that he attributed to her machinations.
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