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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., clashed with journalist Katie Couric in an interview when pressed about the Democratic Party’s “transparency” on President Biden’s fitness.
Couric referenced a section in Pelosi’s new book where she warns that there should’ve been an “intervention” to stop former President Trump’s re-election campaign because of his 2020 election claims. Couric wondered if Democrats shouldn’t have also staged an intervention for Biden, who stepped away from his re-election bid last month under pressure from Pelosi and other top Democrats over concerns about his mental fitness and ability to beat Trump.
“But with all due respect, when I read that, I wondered, ‘Couldn’t the same thing be said about President Biden?’” Couric posed to Pelosi. “Should people have earlier determined that perhaps he didn’t have the physical stamina to endure a re-election campaign and put the Democratic Party in a better position for this election?”
PELOSI DEMURS ON IF ‘EVERYTHING IS OK’ BETWEEN HER AND BIDEN: ‘YOU’D HAVE TO ASK HIM’
Pelosi and other top Democrats reportedly privately pleaded with Biden to drop out of the 2024 race in the weeks after his disastrous debate against Trump, saying polls show he would lose and also hurt Democrats’ chances down the ballot. Biden eventually dropped out on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Pelosi told Couric, in a segment flagged by The Daily Caller, the two situations were “completely different.”
“Whether you think there’s stamina to run again and serve for four years is quite different than [the question of] whether you are undermining our democracy,” she responded. “This was about his harm to the country, the instability that he was bringing to it, and the anti-patriotic attitude he had. It wasn’t about whether he was [physically] healthy enough to do this or that… It was what was happening in his distortion of the facts and how he was misrepresenting to the public,” she said.
“Two completely different situations. If it’s just a question of if somebody has the stamina to [serve] for four years, we have addressed that. They haven’t.”
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Couric asked again if there should have been “more transparency” from Democrats on Biden’s health.
Pelosi repeated that the situations were not “equivalent” twice before Couric pushed back.
“But that doesn’t answer the question of whether there should have been more transparency,” Couric said. “If President Biden was too protected and kept from the public for too long, and that it put the Democratic Party at a disadvantage, given the election is less than 100 days away?”
Pelosi evaded the question again, repeating, “He’s not the candidate.”
“Should it have been dealt with earlier?” Couric pressed.
Pelosi said leading up to the debate and since, Biden had been “functioning A-plus,” pointing to the successful prisoner swap to bring home reporter Evan Gershkovich and others last week.
The 84-year-old Democrat has repeatedly defended Biden against criticisms over his age in media interviews. Pelosi told Couric the June debate was the first time she had witnessed a decline.
“Whatever the family decisions were — I worked with Biden quite a bit. I never saw that because I usually worked with [him] earlier in the day, when he was more in charge than what I saw that night. That night [of the debate] was the first I saw it…. [But] he’s not running, the other guy is,” she argued.
