Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi’s five-decade long friendship appears to be in a perilous place.
The politicians haven’t spoke since at least July 21, The New York Times reported Wednesday. That’s the day Biden bowed out of the 2024 presidential race after a pressure campaign from prominent Democrats.
At the forefront of that push to oust the president was Pelosi, who reportedly wielded her power to have her old pal taken off the ticket. That effort was immediately followed by a nationwide tour where she’s showcased her book, The Art of Power, which gave her the “opportunity to disparage Biden’s political team for failing,” the Times reported.
The relationship turning shaky in public view appears to be taking a toll on Pelosi. The 84-year-old the New Yorker earlier this month that she loses sleep at night thinking about her standing with Biden.
Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi share a laugh together on Capitol Hill in 2009.
Reuters
When pressed on whether she hopes her and Biden can one day fully reconcile, she told the magazine, “I hope so, I pray so, I cry so.” In The Art of Power, she wrote that Biden was among the first people to call her after her husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer in 2022.
“He was so prayerful, kind, and thoughtful in his comments,” she wrote.
Biden hasn’t directly addressed the rift publicly, but multiple reports have said he took exception to being pressured out of his own re-election race. A Politico report on Wednesday, which cited people close to Biden, said he views Pelosi as “ruthless” for “ushering him out the door.”
That report claimed Biden, 81, also holds frustrations with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer, but is starting to understand why the push was necessary—a decision that appears smarter by the day for Democrats as Kamala Harris continues to light up polls where Biden was falling.
Politico reported that Biden told someone close to him that he feels Pelosi ultimately “did what she had to do” to give Democrats their best shot at winning in November. He reportedly added that Pelosi “cares about the party,” not about feelings.
Biden’s only public comment about Pelosi since dropping out came in a televised interview this weekend, in which he said he decided to call it quits once he realized that talk of his mental capacity had become a distraction.
“I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Biden told CBS. “You’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something], why did s0—and—and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”
While there appears to be mutual respect between the two, the friendship’s future is still hanging in the balance. The two politicians are regularly regarded as the Silent Generation’s most prominent, having had a heavy hand in Democratic politics since they were each elected to Congress in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Joe Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Nancy Pelosi in May.
Evelyn Hockstein
Biden put his admiration for Pelosi on display in May, awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom and anointing her as the “greatest speaker of the House of Representatives in history.” Pelosi has suggested Biden is worthy of equal praise at the presidential level, saying recently that she’d put Biden on Mount Rushmore if she could.
“A Mount Rushmore kind of president of the United States,” she said to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes. “You have Teddy Roosevelt up there. And he’s wonderful. I don’t say take him down. But you can add Biden.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-14 11:22:00
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