Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the US presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris.
“We live with what happened,” Ms Pelosi said.
Ms Pelosi was speaking to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.
“Had the president got out sooner,” Ms Pelosi said, “there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.
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“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
As Democrats engaged in bitter blame games over Harris’s defeat and a second presidency for Mr Trump, who senior Democrats from Ms Harris down freely called a “fascist”, Ms Pelosi’s words landed like an explosive shell.
The Times said Ms Pelosi “went to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments, most of which took place during his first two years, when she was the House speaker”.
Republicans took the House in 2022. Ms Pelosi (84) was re-elected this week to a 20th two-year term.
Mr Biden was 78 when elected in 2020 and is now just short of 82. He long rejected doubts about his continued capacity for office, but they exploded into the open after a calamitous first debate against Trump (78) in June.
On July 21st, the president took the historic decision to step aside as the Democratic nominee. Within minutes, he endorsed Ms Harris to replace him.
Ms Pelosi reportedly played a key role in persuading Mr Biden to stand aside. But she has not sought to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorker she had “never been that impressed with his political operation”.
She said: “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The president has to make the decision for that to happen.”
Mr Biden is widely reported to be furious with the former speaker. This week, reports have said the president and his senior staffers are furious with Barack Obama, under whom Mr Biden served as vice-president but who also helped push Mr Biden to drop out of the re-election race.
According to the Times, Ms Pelosi also rejected comments from Bernie Sanders in which the independent senator from Vermont said Mr Trump won because Democrats “abandoned working-class people” – remarks the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, called “straight-up BS”.
“Bernie Sanders has not won,” Mr Pelosi said. “With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.”
According to Ms Pelosi, cultural issues pushed American votes to Mr Trump.
“Guns, God and gays – that’s the way they say it,” she said. “Guns, that’s an issue. Gays, that’s an issue. And now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities, and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose” regarding abortion and other reproductive care.
Meanwhile, a US judge on Friday set aside pending deadlines in president-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case after federal prosecutors said they were grappling with the “unprecedented circumstance” of his impending return to the White House.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington approved a request from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the criminal case, to set aside the deadlines, according to a court order, while they weigh its future.
Prosecutors wrote the delay was necessary “to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy”.
Under a Justice Department policy dating back to the 1970s, a sitting president cannot be subject to criminal prosecution.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday that the Justice Department was discussing how to wind down the case as Mr Trump prepares to again assume the presidency.
Mr Trump pleaded not guilty last year to four criminal charges accusing the Republican of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The effort by Trump and his allies to reverse Biden’s victory culminated in the deadly January 6th, 2021, attack on the US Capitol following a fiery speech by the then-president near the White House.
Mr Trump’s defeat of vice-president Kamala Harris, is likely to end two federal cases against him.
Trump’s lawyers had been due to respond by November 21st to Mr Smith’s argument that the case can proceed after a US Supreme Court ruling giving former presidents broad immunity from prosecution over official actions taken while in office.
Mr Smith said prosecutors would inform the judge by December 2nd how they propose to move forward. – Guardian/Reuters