Rep. Nancy Pelosi has been recovering from a nasty fall while on a congressional trip to Luxembourg last December. She broke her hip during the incident. A fixture of Congress and one of the many faces of the Democratic Party, Pelosi has been showered with the usual flowers and well wishes from friends and colleagues. Yet, two people have been conspicuously absent in these overtures of recovery and good health: Joe and Jill Biden.
Pelosi has tried multiple times, I’m told, to have a conversation with Biden. But she and intermediaries who’ve also attempted a rapprochement have repeatedly been met with the same response from the president’s top advisers: The answer is no.
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) January 19, 2025
“She’s been told they’re not over…
Politico had a brutal piece about the Biden and Pelosi families being at war. It's personal, and it’s been this way for months. Joe Biden and Nancy's friendship has disintegrated. It's shocking to those in their respective inner circles since there was a time when Biden referred to Ms. Pelosi as his Catholic sister.
Pelosi has tried to reach out to the president for quite some time, only to be rebuffed. Jill Biden’s interview with The Washington Post did delve into this matter, where the First Family places much blame on Pelosi for forcing Biden off the 2024 ticket. Then again, Pelosi’s daughter, documentarian Alexandra, coined a new moniker for Jill, and it’s pretty appropriate. Whipping out the knives for her mother, Alexandra said, “Lady McBiden” should grow up, put on some big girl pants, and tend to the legacy left behind by her husband. Oh my, and that fall in Europe also exposed the depth of this friendship, which has reportedly fallen. The former House speaker was worried that she might not be able to secure transport back to the States due to Biden’s anger over the 2024 race (via Politico) [emphasis mine]:
Fueling that anger is Jill Biden’s continued, and now public, nursing of a grudge toward Pelosi for pushing the president to withdraw from last year’s campaign.
“If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game and think about my husband’s legacy,” Alexandra Pelosi, the former speaker’s daughter, told me Saturday. “There aren’t that many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is one of them.” The younger Pelosi made clear she was speaking only for herself.
[…]
Pelosi has tried multiple times, I’m told, to have a conversation with Biden. But she and intermediaries who’ve also attempted a rapprochement have repeatedly been met with the same response from the president’s top advisers: The answer is no.
“She’s been told they’re not over it, don’t make more overtures because he’s blaming her,” said a person who has spoken to Pelosi about the conversations between the former speaker and Biden’s aides.
Pelosi told people last week she’s struck that the Bidens would leave on such a low note, asking rhetorically why they’d convey such bitterness.
A Biden spokesperson declined to speak on the record but did not deny the silence.
[…]
Biden did briefly chat with Pelosi, her husband, Paul, and daughter Christine at a White House holiday party last month. But that encounter only served to remind them of the rupture.
[…]
It’s also common for family members of officeholders to take grudges more personally — and hold them longer. But the political converged with the personal after Pelosi slipped in Luxembourg.
Desperate to get her the best possible care in the initial hours after the accident, the Pelosis grappled with whether she should go to a U.S. military hospital, which she did, or immediately fly back home for care. And part of that trepidation, I’m told, owed to uncertainty about whether Biden would quickly get her a plane “because we have this wall at the White House,” as one person familiar with the situation put it. (Another source said any concerns abated when White House staff heard the news and were swiftly responsive.)
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The chill between the two since has saddened their longtime friends and muted even some of the most forthcoming figures in politics, at least for public consumption, which I was reminded of last wk in a series of terse conversations.
— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) January 19, 2025
“I’ve been around long enough to know that…
There’s another side to the story, which the article highlights, which is that Pelosi did try to usher out Biden with grace, dignity, and, most of all, privacy. The president wouldn’t believe the polls, and his intransigence and stubbornness led to Pelosi and others bulldozing the entire White House operation, whose political team was quintessentially ‘JV’ in nature. Pelosi knew she would win this knife fight, one she didn’t want to have, but she likely saved more congressional seats, which everyone, except for Biden cultists, agreed. Her Morning Joe appearance in July sealed Biden’s fate. As for repairing the friendship, some think time could fix the relationship that’s lasted for 50 years. Time away from the spotlight and press also helps, but some, like Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), feel these two are likely to never speak to one another again:
“There were no threats,” one person familiar with the conversation told me. “She just told him the truth — he was losing in every poll, and people had lost confidence.”
This is not to understate Pelosi’s role in driving Biden from the race. She was the most critical player in last summer’s backstage political drama.
It’s entirely possible the president would have weathered the crisis were it not for Pelosi’s Morning Joe interview, which took place immediately before her meeting with Biden in the White House residence.
Appearing the week Congress returned from July 4, a moment many Democratic lawmakers were drifting back to Biden and the president was emphatic about staying in , the former speaker repeatedly insisted his decision remained an open question. That pivotal moment effectively ensured it was — and less than two weeks later Biden dropped out.
[…]
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) — one of Pelosi’s most dedicated legislative allies and the person Biden credits for taking his son, Hunter, under her wing in New Haven when he was at Yale law school — was as restrained as Dodd.
“Time has a way of working things out,” DeLauro told me, conceding that Pelosi and Biden are both “very strong personalities.”
Those who know Biden well, though, wonder if he can ever truly reconcile with Pelosi.
“I don’t think he’ll ever get over that,” said Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.).
And he’s acted as such since Pelosi’s fall. Biden isn’t Mr. Empathy. He’s a vile and vindicative old man who needs reminders to wear pants and has an inflated sense of himself in the world capital of politics. He was easily defeated by a Democrat who wasn’t even in the leadership anymore. He was outmaneuvered on the world stage to such a degree that chaos reigns. And, among many other things on the domestic front, he made us poorer. There was a supply chain crisis. He allowed Chinese spy balloons to infiltrate our airspace.
He's a failed president who was never meant for the job. And showed it masterfully over these four years of incompetence, chaos, and utter disappointment.
And no, Joe, you still would’ve lost all the swing states, Trump still would’ve won the popular vote, and his Electoral College performance would’ve been better since the president-elect was likely going to take Virginia if you’d stayed in—no one told you that your support was collapsing in the all-important Northern Virginia suburbs? When those heathens start to stray, you know you’re cooked.
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