WASHINGTON — Nancy Pelosi took aim Tuesday at people close to former President Joe Biden, arguing that anyone who recognized signs of the 46th president’s cognitive decline had a responsibility to respond sooner.
Speaking at Politico’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit,” the 86-year-old California Democrat said she “didn’t really know” the extent of Biden’s struggles before his widely criticized June 27, 2024, debate performance against Donald Trump. Pelosi said her in-person contact with Biden had become limited after Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections.
“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” Pelosi said, adding that blame had been passed back and forth: “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”
But author Chris Whipple offered a different glimpse in his 2025 book “Uncharted,” alleging that Pelosi privately told a friend she was “startled by how much the president had aged” after Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a White House ceremony in May 2024.
According to Whipple, Pelosi described the moment by saying, “He was not the same Joe Biden.”
Just one month later, however, Pelosi publicly praised Biden’s “wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking.” Her comments came after the Wall Street Journal published a report more than three weeks before the debate, citing over 45 lawmakers and staffers from both parties who said Biden spoke so quietly in meetings that attendees sometimes had difficulty hearing him, appeared uncertain about existing policies, and leaned on aides to handle direct questions.
Pelosi pushed back sharply against that Journal report in a June 5, 2024, post on X, dismissing it as a “hit piece” that she said “ignored testimony by Democrats” while emphasizing “attacks by Republicans.”
On Tuesday, Pelosi told Politico correspondent Jonathan Martin that Biden’s debate performance was the turning point. “When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that’s really when we learned,” she said. “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.
