Pelosi denies pressuring Biden to step aside: 'I never called anybody'
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she did not ask President Biden to step aside and insisted she did not make any phone calls on the matter, despite reports saying she led a pressure campaign to get Biden off the ticket.
In an interview on "CBS News Sunday Morning," Pelosi declined to detail her private discussions with the president but said she did not lead a pressure campaign.
"No, I wasn't a leader of any pressure party,” Pelosi told Lesley Stahl. “Well, 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.' What I'm saying is, I had confidence that the president would make the proper choice for our country, whatever that would be, and I said that. 'Whatever that is, we'll go with.’”
Pelosi said, when asked, she did not see a decline in Biden.
“No,” she replied. “My whole point was, whatever he decides, but we have to have a more aggressive campaign."
On reports that Biden is “furious” with her, Pelosi said, “Well, he knows that I love him very much.”
Pelosi stressed that her focus was on preserving Biden’s legacy. In the CBS interview, she touted Biden’s accomplishments and specifically praised his leadership at the NATO summit, saying, “So he was in a good place to make whatever decision — the top of his game.”
"Such a consequential president of the United States, a Mount Rushmore kind of president of the United States,” she said, later adding, "Well, you got Teddy Roosevelt up there, and he's wonderful. I don't say take him down. But you can add Biden."
Pelosi repeated a similar sentiment in a Monday interview on ABC News’s “Good Morning America,” when George Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi to expand on the nature of her role in Biden’s decision to step aside.
“Well, I have the greatest respect for the president. I think he will be ... viewed as one of the most consequential presidents in our country," Pelosi said. "I want him, his legacy to be recognized, preserved. It's our legacy, too, in the Congress. We worked together for a great legacy for our country, for a great agenda for working families and for the kitchen table issues for America's working families.
“So I wanted that to be recognized, and he was the one who could recognize it the most. So we just wanted him to make the decision on how we best preserve that legacy,” Pelosi said.
Stephanopoulos asked whether “the only way to do that was for him to step down.”
“That would be up to him to decide,” Pelosi said in response. “It was always about him. And why I said I didn't make calls — because people said I was burning up the airways. No, I wasn't. The only person that I spoke to about this was the president. Other people called me about what their views were about it and, but, I rarely even returned a call, much less initiated one.”