(Headline USA) Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., passive-aggressively declined to endorse President Joe Biden’s reelection bid this week amid growing calls from within her party for the 81-year-old incumbent to drop out.
“It’s up to the president to [decide] if he is going to run,” Pelosi told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday when asked if she supported Biden staying in the 2024 race. “We are all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.”
As interviewer Jonathan Lemire was quick to note, Biden has several times said unequivocally that he intends to remain in the race, including a written letter to congressional Democrats that he sent on Monday.
Thus, Pelosi’s apparent confusion over his decision indicated that she was, in fact, fishing for a different answer.
Some suggested that the shift in tone signaled that the former House speaker was preparing to unload Biden like an underperforming stock, despite her insistence that she had his back should he choose to stay in the race.
Pelosi added that Bien is “beloved, he’s respected, and people want him to make that decision.” She also suggested that she’s told her Democratic colleagues to “hold off” on stating their opinions publicly about Biden staying in the race, although she made it clear in every other way that it was Biden’s time that was running short.
Pressed again on which option she would prefer as one of the Democratic Party’s top leaders, Pelosi replied, “I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”
In a statement after Pelosi’s MSNBC interview, her spokesman, Ian Kragar, clarified that she “fully supports whatever President Biden decides to do. We must turn our attention to why this race is so important: Donald Trump would be a disaster for our country and our democracy.”
Although Biden said he is “firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” he has not eased Democrats’ concerns that he might cost them the 2024 election all the way down the ballot.
“Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide and take with him the Senate and the House,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, Colo., said on Tuesday.
