First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
In his forthcoming memoir, former President Joe Biden accuses former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of working behind the scenes to force him out of the 2024 presidential race, and blames the media for the pressure that ended his campaign. The Atlantic published the passage on Friday.
"Publicly she was still saying it was my decision to make. But privately she was working furiously behind the scenes to get elected officials and Biden delegates to defect," Biden writes in "Promise Me, America," the nearly 500-page memoir due out on Tuesday, November 17, from Little, Brown and Company.
Biden writes that Pelosi met him privately at the White House after his June 27, 2024 debate against Donald Trump and urged him to reassess his candidacy, telling him there were no polls that showed he had any chance of winning. He also describes Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer visiting his Delaware beach house about a week before he dropped out. Biden ended his campaign on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden attributes his withdrawal less to his own debate performance than to a media narrative and party leaders who, he writes, had already made up their minds. "They would say that whether I stayed in the race was my decision to make. And they would respect whatever decision I made. In reality, the only decision they would respect would be my decision to exit the race," he writes. He says he knew right after the debate that he had "screwed that up," and still insists he was the only Democrat who had ever beaten Trump and the best person to do it again, wishing he had been given a second debate. He writes that he stepped aside so he would not split the party.
Pelosi has not issued a public response to the passage, and CNN has reported that she has repeatedly declined to discuss the status of their relationship. Biden writes that the two later met for lunch at an Italian restaurant to repair a friendship he says had been strained, and that they did not discuss the 2024 episode.
Lara Trump pushed back, arguing that the media spent years shielding Biden rather than honestly reporting concerns about his condition. She raised concerns about Biden's sharpness as far back as 2020, when CNN anchor Jake Tapper cut short an interview with her after accusing her of mocking Biden's stutter. Tapper later called her to apologize, telling her "You were right," after reporting his book "Original Sin" on the concealment of Biden's decline.
Biden, 83, has aggressive prostate cancer and has said his treatment will limit how much he can do to promote the book. He waited until after last week's midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, to publish.