Nancy Pelosi, former Democratic House Speaker, revealed this week that she urged former President Joe Biden to release medical testing to the public during a private meeting at the White House during the end of his term.
During POLITICO’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit” event Tuesday, Pelosi – described by POLITICO as “one of the Democratic Party’s foremost tacticians – said she told Biden to release a diagnostic test from a doctor to prove he could “serve the next term,” as his approval ratings sagged. At the time, the public was concerned about the octogenarian’s mental acuity and he eventually dropped out as the Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential race in July after a disastrous debate against current President Donald Trump.
“When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that’s really when we learned,” Pelosi said Tuesday. “I didn’t know, and I think he had his sort of ups and downs.”
Pelosi was no longer Speaker of the House at the end of Biden’s term and said that she only saw him in person a few times in the year prior to the 2024 election. She said that she did not personally witness his decline and that those who knew more about Biden’s condition should have “acted upon that information.”
Since Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in November 2024, more information has come out about the state of Biden’s health and what his team allegedly knew about it, notably in the book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that was released last year.
“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” Pelosi said during the Tuesday interview with POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin. “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”
Biden’s wife Jill revealed this year that she was afraid that her husband had suffered from a stroke during the debate with Trump. Harris also wrote in her book “107 Days” that she thought the decision to have Biden run again was “reckless.”
Pelosi has maintained that she did not demand that Biden drop out of the race after his debate with Trump, leaving Harris to run a historically short campaign. She said that she did push Biden to think critically about polling back in 2024, and she cited polls that found most Americans “didn’t think he should run.”
According to POLITICO, Pelosi’s remarks this week “reflect some of the most detailed reflections she’s shared publicly about the role she played in convincing Biden to not to run for another term.”
