Pelosi admits having no contact with Biden since forcing him out of2024 race

Nancy Pelosi and President Biden are giving each other the silent treatment.The former House speaker confirmed that she has not spoken with the commander in chief since Pelosi led the final drive to force Biden to abandon his bid for re-election over the summer.“Not since then, no,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told The Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast, a new episode of which was released Tuesday.

“But I’m prayerful about it.”“I have the greatest respect for him.I think he’s one of the great consequential presidents of our country,” Pelosi, 84, went on.

“I think his legacy had to be protected.I didn’t see that happening in the course that it was on, the election was on.”Pelosi reportedly told Biden that if he did not step away from the 2024 race, she would go public with her belief that he could not defeat Donald Trump in November and release polling data to that effect following the 81-year-old’s disastrous June 27 debate against his Republican predecessor.While Pelosi initially claimed she “did not call one person,” during the turmoil, she has since admitted that “people called me.”Asked to further elaborate on her conversations with Biden before he dropped out of the race July 21, Pelosi said: “My call was just to: ‘Let’s get on a better course.

He will make the decision as to what that is.’ And he made that decision.But I think he has some unease because we’ve been friends for decades.”Biden has publicly claimed that “No one influenced my decision, no one knew it was coming” but acknowledged the internal pressure was a “distraction.”“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 later reflected to “CBS News Sunday Morning” on Aug.11.Immedia...