Nancy Pelosi brushed off questions about her under-the-radar feud with former top Biden adviser Anita Dunn on Monday.
The former House speaker was instrumental in getting Biden to step down from the 2024 running, which frustrated some of the president’s top allies.
‘Nobody wants to have a fight with Nancy Pelosi at this time because we’re a united party,’ Biden’s former adviser Dunn, who is now working at a pro-Kamala Harris super PAC, said on CNN.
Pelosi shot back on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, saying that she ‘just wanted to win.’
‘I have my relationship with the president, and I just wanted to win this election. So if they’re upset, I’m sorry for them. but the country is very happy,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know who they are, but you know that’s their problem. Not mine.’
When pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash about her own involvement in Biden’s decision, she said her concern ‘was not about the president it was about his campaign’ and he ‘made the decision for the country.’
But when Tapper specifically asked Pelosi about Dunn’s comments on not wanting to pick a fight with her ‘at this time,’ Pelosi replied puzzlingly: ‘Sometimes you just have to take a punch for the children.’
Nancy Pelosi brushed off questions about her under-the-radar feud with former top Biden adviser Anita Dunn
Tapper replied: ‘So that’s what you’re doing right now? You’re just going to take the punches for the children?’
While Bash chimed in confused, asking Pelosi directly: ‘Who is punching?’
Pelosi pivoted, talking about the massive momentum for Harris compared to Biden.
‘So why are we even talking about this?’ she went on, adding in a laugh.
Her comments came on day one of the four-day DNC where Democrats will formally anoint Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz to lead the top of their ticket.
Pelosi was known to be operating quietly behind the scenes to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.
As Biden continued to say he he would not step aside, Pelosi ignored his insistence and argued the door was still open and he needed to make a decision.
Nearly a month ago on July 21, Biden succumbed to intense pressure and dropped out of the presidential race for 2024. Democrats quickly lined up behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be at the top of their ticket.
Earlier this month Dunn took a pointed jab at Pelosi when she blamed ‘certain leaders’ for losing Democrats the House in 2022.
‘Nobody wants to have a fight with Nancy Pelosi at this time because we’re a united party,’ Dunn said on CNN Monday
‘The task in front of us is to win this election and to not let Donald Trump become president again and to win the House of Representatives, which, had certain leaders in 2022 done a slightly better job, maybe we would control today, but we don’t,’ she said.
‘That is the job ahead of us,’ Dunn added. ‘And it’s critical because, as the president has said, this country is at an inflection point.’
Dunn, a longtime Biden adviser who left to join a pro-Harris super PAC, said Biden’s decision to step back and throw his full support to Vice Harris was the greatest part of his legacy.’
‘You know, it was rough. And no reflection on the vice president because I think one of the greatest things aboutJoe Biden’s legacy will be that he made sure that there was a pipeline in which Kamala Harris was going to be the natural person everyone turned to if something happened to him,’ she told Politico in an interview.
After Jake Tapper asks about the "residual bad blood" between her and Team Biden, Nancy Pelosi says: "Sometimes you have to take a punch for the children."
She then wonders, "Why are we even talking about it?" prompting Tapper to joke that "they're holding my cat hostage." pic.twitter.com/VzxH1FuwCB— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 20, 2024
What does former Biden senior advisor Anita Dunn make of Nancy Pelosi telling frustrated Biden allies "that's their problem, not mine." "Nobody wants to have a fight with Nancy Pelosi at this time," Dunn tells me on @InsidePolitics. pic.twitter.com/E8vAaIf6du
— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) August 19, 2024
Dunn also quibbled with characterizations of his debate disaster as catostrophic, even though it precipitated the end of his run.
‘Voters didn’t particularly like Biden’s performance in the first half hour. He wasn’t scoring well at all. But it’s not as though they walked out,’ she said. ‘They very much liked a lot of the second half of the debate for Joe Biden. They hated Donald Trump.’
She recalled ’24 days of unremitting negative, horrible attacks on Joe Biden.’
Among her most sharp remarks were hitting back at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has continued to comment on Biden while taking a victory lap. Harris’ numbers have shot up, injecting what her running mate Tim Walz calls ‘joy’ into the campaign, and persuading Democrats she has a fighting chance.
‘You know, clearly there were leaders of the party who decided to go ahead and go very public. And that gave permission to other people to go public,’ she said.
During the brutal period of reflection after the debate, some Democrats faulted Biden’s team for agreeing to an earlier than usual contest with Donald Trump, and for failing to share the weaknesses that resulted in what the White House at the time called a ‘bad night.’
‘So [former President] Trump didn’t gain any ground in the debate whatsoever. And we actually picked up a few votes in the group. So it was a bad debate, but it didn’t feel catastrophic at all, certainly in terms of voters,’ said Dunn.
‘And I think other people who did independent research saw roughly the same thing. If you go back and you look at the polls, what you will see is you didn’t see much movement whatsoever coming out of the debate because the structure of this campaign had been fairly static for a long time, and the debate didn’t change that.’
Pelosi has also described Biden’s decision as a key part of his legacy on a recent media tour. But she also told the New Yorker she knew after the debate he wouldn’t win.
