Nancy Pelosi said Biden allies who knew about his decline should have acted sooner, while insisting she did not fully grasp it before the June 2024 debate.
Nancy Pelosi is pressing a sharp question around Joe Biden’s decline, saying allies who knew more should have stepped in sooner. Speaking Tuesday in Washington at Politico’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit,” the former House speaker said people around the former president who understood the situation “should have acted upon that information” before Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024, debate with Donald Trump.
The 86-year-old California Democrat said she did not really understand the extent of Biden’s problems before that debate and noted that she rarely saw him in person after Democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections. “I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” she said. Pelosi added that she had heard conflicting accounts about who knew what, saying, “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”
Pelosi’s remarks land against a backdrop of growing scrutiny over how closely Biden’s inner circle and top Democratic allies tracked his condition before the debate exposed his frailty to a national audience. Author Chris Whipple wrote in his 2025 book “Uncharted” that Pelosi told a friend she was “startled by how much the president had aged” when Biden presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony in May 2024. Whipple also quoted her as saying, “He was not the same Joe Biden.”
That account clashes with Pelosi’s public posture in the weeks before the debate. After the Wall Street Journal published a report on June 5, 2024, citing more than 45 Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staffers who said Biden spoke so softly in meetings that people had trouble understanding him, did not seem aware of some policies, and leaned on aides for answers, Pelosi defended him. She praised his “wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking” and blasted the Journal piece in an X post as a “hit piece” that, in her view, ignored Democratic testimony and focused on Republican attacks.
Pelosi also pushed back on the idea that she personally drove Biden from the race. She said media accounts overstated her role and recalled telling him only that she had concerns about the polling and the way his campaign was being run. She said that, at the time, 72% of Americans did not think he should run. Pelosi also said she urged Biden to undergo some kind of cognitive test and release the results so the public could be reassured he could serve another term.
Still, Pelosi has previously not backed Biden when his candidacy came under fire. During a July 10, 2024, appearance on “Morning Joe,” she said it was up to Biden to decide whether to run and added that Democrats were encouraging him to make that choice because time was running short. Biden later ended his reelection bid. The debate, the questions around who knew what, and the public split over how long his condition had been hidden continue to shadow the end of his presidency. For American voters, the issue goes to trust, transparency, and whether party leaders tell the truth early enough when a president’s fitness for office is on the line.
