Former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed a bombshell Wall Avenue Journal report on former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline a month after the California Democrat confided in pals that she was alarmed by how a lot he had aged, in keeping with a brand new e-book.
“He was not the identical Joe Biden,” Pelosi reportedly instructed a pal of the then-president’s situation after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom award throughout a Might 2024 White Home ceremony.
The declare is from creator Chris Whipple’s new e-book, “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds within the Wildest Marketing campaign in Historical past.”
Whipple wrote that Pelosi was “startled by how a lot the president had aged” after collaborating within the ceremony, in keeping with Fox Information.
The White Home occasion came about precisely a month earlier than Biden’s dramatic decline was detailed in a Wall Avenue Journal report, the place greater than 45 Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staffers described a president who spoke so softly throughout conferences that contributors struggled to know him; didn’t seem to know what insurance policies had been in place; and relied on staffers to reply direct questions.
Regardless of privately voicing her considerations with Biden’s superior age – he was 81 on the time – Pelosi publicly slammed the report as a “hit piece.”
“Many people frolicked with [the WSJ] to share on the report our first-hand experiences with [Biden], the place we see his knowledge, expertise, energy and strategic considering,” Pelosi wrote in a June 5, 2024, X publish. “As an alternative, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, targeted on assaults by Republicans and printed a success piece.”
Weeks later, Biden’s declining psychological acuity was on full show throughout his disastrous June 27, 2024, debate in opposition to Trump — leading to a wave of Democrats calling for him to not search re-election.
On the time, The Put up reported that Pelosi had performed the “dangerous cop” to Senate Democratic Chief Chuck Schumer’s “good cop” in convincing Biden to bow out.
Different shops reported that Pelosi threatened to launch inner polling exhibiting that Biden had no probability in opposition to Trump if the president insisted on carrying on.
“Pelosi believed Biden’s advisers had been deceptive him, exhibiting him rosy ballot numbers. She’d by no means been impressed by them; in her thoughts, they had been an previous boys’ membership who talked solely to themselves,” Whipple wrote.
The creator claims Biden felt “betrayed” by Pelosi after she assisted in efforts to get him out of the race.
Pelosi’s workplace didn’t reply to The Put up’s request for remark.
The previous Home speaker has blamed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ crushing loss to Trump within the 2024 election on Biden not exiting the race faster.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there might have been different candidates within the race,” she instructed the New York Occasions in an interview printed final November.
Former first girl Jill Biden revealed earlier this 12 months that it was “disappointing” to see Pelosi intervene within the 2024 marketing campaign.
“We had been pals for 50 years,” Jill instructed the Washington Put up in January. “It was disappointing.”
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