Nancy Pelosi Really Doesn’t Sound Like She Wants Joe Biden to Run

Does Joe Biden have Representative Nancy Pelosi’s support to lead the Democratic ticket in November? Pelosi says that it’s up to him.

Pelosi was asked the question on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, and she ominously replied, “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run.

“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said. Host Jonathan Lemire then reminded her that Biden has said he is going to run, and asked her if she wanted him to run.

“I want him to decide whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is, whatever he decides, we go in,” Pelosi responded.

Pelosi’s response could be easily interpreted as a nonanswer. Immediately after Biden’s disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, she didn’t make a commitment either. Last week, she called for both Donald Trump and Biden to take a mental fitness test.

Even though she doesn’t lead the House Democratic caucus anymore, Pelosi’s opinion still carries a lot of weight as a senior Democrat, and she presumably is in conversation with other leading members of the party. On Tuesday, House Democrats held a private closed-door meeting that reportedly left the party still divided on the future of Biden’s candidacy. While Biden has tried to put any thoughts of replacing him to bed, reports show that many Democrats are worried about his chances of winning reelection. If Biden doesn’t have total support from his party heading into November, it doesn’t bode well.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopolous was caught on film expressing doubt that President Joe Biden will be able to handle another term in the White House, only a few days after he did an exclusive interview with the embattled commander in chief.

In a low-quality video published by TMZ Tuesday, a pedestrian approached Stephanopoulos on the street in New York City. “Do you think Biden should step down? You’ve talked to him more than anybody else has lately,” the man asked.

“I don’t think he can serve four more years,” Stephanopolous replied, in a candid moment.

It’s a troubling response from the journalist whose interview with the president last week was meant to assuage national anxieties about Biden’s mental acuity, following a disastrous performance in last month’s presidential debate on CNN.

Stephanopolous’s comment also comes amid a high-stakes week for the president, as Biden continues to face calls from within his own party to withdraw from the presidential race, while also attending the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

Stephanopoulos confirmed to TMZ that he had in fact made that statement but sought to walk it back some. “Earlier today, I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have,” he told the outlet.

An ABC spokesperson clarified to TMZ that “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News.”

Donald Trump gave a particularly incoherent speech during a recent rally, as he rattled through a lengthy list of odd grievances that didn’t quite ring true, devoid of some very necessary segues.

In front of a crowd of about 700 people (although Trump claimed it was 45,000) in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday, the former president hit all of the normal beats of his campaign trail speeches, and then some.

Trump attacked President Joe Biden for his weak performance in the presidential debate last month, and for many of his policies. He dropped Kamala Harris’s name more than a few times, arguing that it doesn’t matter who the Democrats’ candidate is, he will beat anyone in a “thundering landslide.”

Over sweeping music, Trump went for a tear-jerking moment, only to suddenly veer into complaining about something else. It’s included in full because it’s just that wild.

“We will institute the powerful death penalty for drug dealers, where each dealer is responsible for the death, during their lives, of 500 people or more,” he said.

“Mothers will never again be forced to watch their children overdosing in hosp … and we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly dying in their arms screaming, ‘What can I do, what can I do? Help me God, what can I do?’ We are a nation whose once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess,” Trump continued, pivoting suddenly.

“You sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave, that they have no idea when they will. Where ticket prices have tripled. They don’t have the pilots to fly the planes, they don’t seek qualified air traffic controllers, and they just don’t know what the hell they are doing.”

From the death penalty to crying mothers and crappy airports, if Trump was hoping for an emotional moment, he seems to have missed it by a mile. His breakneck pace and awkward delivery suggests that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t actually care about a single one of his randomly assembled points. How can anyone take him seriously when he speeds from his often-repeated, baseless claims about immigrants to whining that as a country, “We don’t eat bacon anymore”?

Trump continued to rely on blatant fearmongering to excite his supporters, who grew sleepy and disinterested as the former president rattled on through his 75-minute speech, according to The Guardian.

“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city, so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime. But rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world,” Trump said.

“Right now, if you leave Florida, ‘Oh, let’s go, darling, let’s look at the Jefferson Memorial, let’s look at the Washington Monument, let’s go and look at some of the beautiful scenes,’ and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped,” he warned, promising that he’d run the city “tough and smart.”

The violent crime rate in D.C. has dropped 30 percent since 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. But of course, Trump is unconcerned with actual crime statistics. Instead, he’s interested in keeping his base in red states ignorant, fearful, and angry about life in blue states.

Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t want Senator Marco Rubio to be his father’s running mate, fearing that it would tempt establishment Republicans into impeaching the elder Trump.

The younger Trump expressed his fear on his video podcast Triggered Monday evening, in response to a submitted question during a live Q&A, where the questioner claimed that “Rubio guarantees another impeachment,” to which the host agreed.

If Rubio was the vice president on the ticket, “by the time my father’s hand moves off in the swearing in process … 12 p.m. January 20, the second it goes off, impeachment!” Trump Jr. said. “That’s how fast it would be.”

“There is something about having someone from outside the establishment to sort of further protect you from that establishment,” Trump Jr. added.

While speculation abounds, there still is no indication as to who Trump will pick as his vice president. Some reports say the shortlist has three people: Rubio, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Other names have been mentioned in the past few months, including Senator Tim Scott, Representative Elise Stefanik, and Representative Byron Donalds.

In Rubio’s case, though, his presence on the ticket would seem odd considering how much Trump mocked the Florida senator on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, calling him “little Marco.” Rubio eventually fell in line like the rest of the GOP and backed Trump, but his political career never quite got over Trump’s bullying and his unsuccessful attempts to shoot back.

Lately, Rubio has been defending the former president and convicted felon from attacks related to the Heritage Foundation’s extreme playbook Project 2025, downplaying the manifesto and Trump’s connection to it. Will Trump overlook Rubio’s establishment ties to get a staunch defender like him as his vice president? According to one Trump adviser, the decision should be known to everyone by next Monday.

Project 2025’s prominence as a master plan for a Trump administration continues to gain prominence—and weaponized ridicule. “Google Project 2025,” President Joe Biden posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning. The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday also put up several billboards fusing Donald Trump to Project 2025 in Doral, Florida, where Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in the evening.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump claimed on Friday. “I have no idea who is behind it.” Yet, the Republican Party’s platform—adopted from a proposed platform crafted by Trump’s campaign—has clear ties to Project 2025. Russ Vought, the RNC platform committee’s policy chair, and Ed Martin, RNC deputy policy director, were installed in their RNC roles in coordination with the Trump campaign. Vought, a former Trump appointee, wrote a chapter of Project 2025, and both men are on Project 2025’s advisory board, according to ABC News. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the project has provoked ire from far-right pundits such as Alex Jones and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who both insinuated Trump is being controlled by the establishment of the Republican Party.

“Donald Trump is lying again now,” Biden said in a statement released on Saturday in response to Trump denying affiliation to Project 2025. “He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda. The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”

Project 2025, or the Presidential Transition Project, is a massive 900-page planning document offering pathways to dramatically overhaul the federal government in line with Trump’s aspirations and to pursue extreme policies Trump has floated. It’s the work of former Trump staffers and led by right-wing hate groups and top conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts stated last week, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.”

As the BBC notes, Project 2025 echoes Trump’s own policy agenda, dubbed Agenda 47 on the basis of Trump becoming the forty-seventh president if he wins in November. While Trump’s campaign has denied Project 2025 as a policy platform endorsed by Trump, the document in actuality functions as a high-speed pathway to institute the policies he desires. When Trump stated he wants to deport 20 million people, for example, Project 2025 released a portion of the document that details exactly how he could do that. As Trump faced multiple federal investigations, Project 2025 crafted and released a plan for how he could turn the Department of Justice and FBI into his personal attack dogs.

Some aspects of Project 2025, such as a nationwide abortion ban, stray significantly from Trump’s stated positions. But as Rolling Stone notes, Trump’s “softened” position on abortion adopted by the RNC is nothing more than a gambit to dupe voters.

Similarities between much of the Project 2025 plan and Trump’s own campaign ambitions continue to spoil Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the extreme agenda. According to The Free Press, sources close to the Trump campaign have tried signaling to Project 2025 to stop pitching itself, saying, “The message we are sending to Heritage and others is the same as it was in December: You’re not helping.” An ex-adviser to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence this week decried Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 as “ludicrous.”