Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview published Wednesday that she was unaware of the extent of President Biden’s cognitive decline before he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, insisting that responsibility instead falls on those closer to him who allegedly did know.
“I didn’t know, but I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information, whatever that means,” Pelosi said in the Politico interview. Pressed on who specifically might have known, she offered a shrug of an answer: “There was the staff saying the family knew, the family saying the staff knew, I don’t know.”
Pelosi described her own direct engagement with Biden during that period as centered on campaign strategy rather than his health, saying she told him, “I’ve come to question the polling that you have and how your campaign is being conducted,” and that she suggested he bring in independent pollsters to review his campaign’s data. She also said she told him the public would want reassurance about his fitness for a second term, recalling that she suggested, “I think the public would like to hear that you’ve had a testing that demonstrates that you can serve the next [term].”
Pelosi repeatedly denied that she ever directly asked Biden to leave the race, saying she never told him to “not run or anything like that,” even as she has been widely credited, including by Democratic strategists and commentators, with playing a decisive behind-the-scenes role in pressuring Biden to withdraw last summer.
The comments drew immediate skepticism from conservative commentators. Fox News contributor Guy Benson called Pelosi’s account “non-credible gaslighting,” pointing out that she was “a driving force behind Biden dropping out” of the race, a fact critics say is difficult to reconcile with her claim of having been unaware of the severity of his decline.
The remarks also reopen questions about Pelosi’s public posture during the 2024 campaign itself, when she publicly suggested in July of that year that Biden remained undecided about staying in the race, even as the president and his campaign were publicly insisting he had no intention of dropping out. Pelosi has not addressed that apparent contradiction directly in her recent comments.
