By Nancy Pelosi has finally gone on record to explain why she made her move to throw Joe Biden overboard last month.
The Washington Post spoke with the former Speaker of the House about the move to push Biden aside, and it all came down to one thing–her hatred for Donald Trump and her refusal to let him back into the White House no matter what.
“Now I was really asking for a better campaign. We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory. Members knew that in their districts,” the former House speaker told a small group of reporters during an interview Wednesday promoting her new book.
In her most extensive remarks yet about the political earthquake over the last five weeks, Pelosi said that Biden’s June 27 debate debacle and the aftermath revealed two troubling signs making it all but inevitable that Trump would return to the White House: The president was performing poorly as a candidate and his campaign operation was also flawed.
“My goal in life was that that man would never set foot in the White House again,” she said of Trump, pounding the table nine times for emphasis and to explain why she acted. She added that she couldn’t stand to see “an unfolding of events that were just putting rose petals in front of him to go there.”
Pelosi declined to go into any specifics about her conversations with Biden or other senior Democrats following the debate, sticking to previous assertions that she did not lead any effort to oust Biden after a crescendo of Democratic elected officials questioned the president’s ability to win his reelection race. But she acknowledged that she counseled many lawmakers and other Democrats who desperately wanted to see a change at the top of the ticket.
“I didn’t make one call. I did not make one call. People called me — hundreds,” she said.
The former Speaker also spoke to The New Yorker and revealed just how much of a joke the leaders of the Democratic Party actually find Joe Biden to be.
“I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation,” she told the magazine in an interview published last week. “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.”
“I really wanted him to make a decision for a better campaign, because they were not facing the fact of what was happening,” Pelosi continued. “We couldn’t see it go down the drain, because Trump was going to be president and then he was going to take the House. Imagine! Imagine how that would be! Well, we don’t have to imagine. We saw.”
Last month, several outlets reported that the former Speaker performed a well-orchestrated “palace coup” against the sitting president.
Politico reported that she gave Biden the blunt truth. “Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” said one Democrat familiar with private conversations who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”
The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlines procedures for presidential succession and transfer of power in cases of presidential incapacity. It can be instigated by the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet if they believe the President is unable to perform duties, ensuring continuity of government.
Following Pelosi’s intervention, Vice President Kamala Harris was handed the Democratic nomination without ever receiving a vote.
[Read More: Kamala Harris Gets A Rude Awakening]
