WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bashed allies of former President Joe Biden Tuesday, saying those who were aware of the 46th president’s cognitive decline “should have acted upon that information” earlier.
The 86-year-old Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed at Politico’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit” event that she “didn’t really know” about Biden’s problems before his disastrous June 27, 2024, debate against Donald Trump, saying that she rarely saw the then-commander in chief in person after Democrats lost the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” she claimed. “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”
However, author Chris Whipple alleged in his 2025 book “Uncharted” that Pelosi told a friend that she was “startled by how much the president had aged” when Biden presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2024 at a White House ceremony.
“He was not the same Joe Biden,” Whipple quoted Pelosi as saying.
The following month, Pelosi touted Biden’s “wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking” after the Wall Street Journal published a story — more than three weeks before the debate — in which more than 45 Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staffers reported the president spoke so softly during meetings that participants struggled to understand him, did not appear to know what policies were in place, and relied on aides to answer direct questions.
Pelosi decried the Journal story in a June 5, 2024, X post as a “hit piece” that “ignored testimony by Democrats” and “focused on attacks by Republicans.”
“When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that’s really when we learned,” she insisted Tuesday to Politico correspondent Jonathan Martin. “I didn’t know, and I think he had his sort of ups and downs.”
The longtime San Francisco lawmaker also argued that her involvement in convincing Biden to end his re-election bid was “written about in a way that really didn’t happen.”
“I only said to President Biden, ‘I’ve come to question the polling that you have and how your campaign is being conducted,’” Pelosi recounted. “… Because, at that point, 72% of the American people didn’t think he should run.”
She also said she urged Biden to get some sort of cognitive examination and release the results to reassure the public that he could “serve the next term.”
Pelosi denied directly telling Biden to drop out of the race and has previously denied making calls to Democrats who later pushed for the president to end his re-election bid.
However, Pelosi notably declined to back Biden during a July 10, 2024, appearance on “Morning Joe,” said to be the president’s favorite morning show, saying instead: “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
Last year, Biden announced that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that has since metastasized to his bones. Due to the diagnosis, former first lady Jill Biden has since claimed that a second term wouldn’t have been advisable for her husband.
