Pelosi denies knowing about Biden decline, says others should have acted

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied knowing anything about former President Joe Biden’s decline on Tuesday, but said those who did know “should have acted” on the information.

Pelosi said repeatedly she didn’t know Biden had experienced any sort of decline and told Politico’s Jonathan Martin, “I didn’t know, but I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information, whatever that means.”

“There was the staff saying the family knew, the family saying the staff knew, I don’t know,” she added, noting they should have acted sooner. The pair had been feuding over the 2024 race, but Pelosi said in March that they had spoken.

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Pelosi, who was widely considered to be a driving force behind Biden dropping out of the race in 2024, also repeated her denial that she didn’t ask the former president to drop out.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi greets former President Joe Biden in the Rotunda as he arrives to pay his respects to the late Rep. Don Young, R-A.K., while lying in state in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol March 29, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“I only said to President Biden, ‘I’ve come to question the polling that you have and how your campaign is being conducted,'” Pelosi said. “I didn’t ask him not to run or anything like that. This is what I asked. ‘I would hope that we could have some other pollsters come in and sit with your pollster and discuss what they hear out there.'”

“And I did say this, ‘I think the public would like to hear that you’ve had a testing that demonstrates that you can serve the next [term],'” she added.

Martin asked Pelosi how Biden responded to her statement. The former House Speaker said Biden said he was being tested in his job daily.

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Pelosi said, “He responded. We were prayerful, you know, Catholic. We’re prayerful. We had our rosaries and all that. And we had a lovely meeting. It was only the two of us, except when he put somebody on the phone to talk about the polls. So, whatever people said about it there, didn’t come from me, or maybe it came from somebody in his staff, but none of his staff was really in the room. He said, ‘I get tested every day in what I’m doing and the rest of that.’ I said, ‘I think people want to see something more in that regard.’”

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., waves to the crowd during the 52nd annual San Francisco Pride Parade on June 26, 2022, in San Francisco, Calif. (Arun Nevader/Getty Images)

Fox News political analyst Guy Benson told Fox News Digital that her latest statements came across as “non-credible gaslighting.”

“Everyone with eyes and ears clocked the former president’s clear decline. The gaslighting denials came from partisan actors who were invested in a political outcome, very much including Pelosi. Once their gaslighting efforts died on that debate stage, they feigned shock at the very reality they’d cynically attacked others for noticing, very much including Pelosi. Because their desired outcome abruptly required turning on Biden, the knives came out. And the sharpest knife may have belonged to Pelosi. She can try to deny this, but it’s just more non-credible gaslighting,” Benson told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Pelsoi appeared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” in early July 2024, after Biden had assured Democrats he was remaining in the race. Pelosi insinuated in the interview that Biden was still deciding whether or not he would remain in the race.

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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, speaks as former President Joe Biden listens during a signing ceremony for H.R. 4346, the Chips and Science Act of 2022, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We are all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said at the time.

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Biden’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.