Nancy Pelosi Says She Didn’t Make Any Calls to Get President Biden to Leave Democratic Ticket in Carefully Worded Answers | Video
The House speaker emerita faces questions about what she told the president and reports that he is "furious" with her
The post Nancy Pelosi Says She Didn’t Make Any Calls to Get President Biden to Leave Democratic Ticket in Carefully Worded Answers | Video appeared first on TheWrap.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi addressed reports that she worked to orchestrate President Joe Biden stepping aside as the Democratic Party’s candidate in a new interview for “CBS Sunday Morning.”
When asked what she’d told Biden to persuade him to step aside, the House Speaker Emerita told CBS’s Lesley Stahl, “Well, I’ve never shared any conversations with a president of the United States publicly, no.”
Pelosi was then asked about reports that Biden is “furious” with her, to which she responded, “Well, he knows that I love him very much.”
Watch the excerpt previewing Sunday’s interview with Pelosi here:
“I did not call one person.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks with Lesley Stahl about her role in President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the presidential race. https://t.co/BtvgDUKdYf pic.twitter.com/cnJ8ywR5sU
— CBS Sunday Morning(@CBSSunday) August 3, 2024
Stahl noted that Pelosi clearly didn’t want to “own” this action, but pointed to the extensive reporting around the campaign that led to Biden choosing to step aside.
“No, I wasn’t the leader of any pressure in this party,” Pelosi responded. “Let me say things that I didn’t do: I didn’t call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to him, ‘I never called anybody.'”
Pelosi appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” in connection with the promotion of her book, titled appropriately enough, “The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House.” It’s set for release on Tuesday.
She has served 19 terms as a Democrat from the San Francisco Bay area and details her influence as a member of Congress and longtime speaker of the House in the new book. Their interview also covers the violent attack on her husband Paul Pelosi at their home that nearly killed him — the speaker emerita herself was the intended target — as well as the Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection, her advice for Kamala Harris in her race against Donald Trump and her thoughts on the choice of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate.
In an excerpt from Pelosi’s book shared with CBS, Pelosi argues that being speaker “is probably the most challenging position in government.” Contrasting it with being president, she writes, “You have to address the same vast array of issues as the president (but lack the advantage of making appointments across the executive branch and proposing judicial nominees).”
She lays out in the excerpt that members of Congress are normally given time through hearings, town halls and other methods to “act deductively” as they make their decisions, but that “the speakership is different. It is both a uniquely powerful and an executive position that requires a combination of a policy background, strategic knowhow, and, above all, intuition.”
In the speaker role, Pelosi writes, you can’t ever be surprised and must know all the possibilities at all times. “The minute you hesitate, your options are diminished,” she states. “The longer you wait, the more your options are diminished. Everyone with an agenda will chip away at your delayed decision.”
She emphasized the importance of constant communication with the members of her caucus, both for your own information and to give them “confidence in your knowledge and judgment.” Pelosi closes the excerpt by emphasizing the importance in her work of “respect.”
You can read the full excerpt from Pelosi’s new book here and see the full interview on this week’s “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The post Nancy Pelosi Says She Didn’t Make Any Calls to Get President Biden to Leave Democratic Ticket in Carefully Worded Answers | Video appeared first on TheWrap.