Former President Barack Obama was not pleased that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris the day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.
In his new book Retribution, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl provided new details on what had been widely known – that Obama didn’t want a quick coronation of Harris, but rather ‘a process’ to determine who would become the Democratic nominee.
The Daily Mail obtained an advanced copy.
Obama called Pelosi shortly after her endorsement of Harris became public.
‘The Obamas were not happy,’ a Pelosi confidant told Karl. ‘This person summed up Obama’s message to Pelosi as, essentially, “What the f*** did you just do?”‘
Pelosi told the former Democratic president: ‘That train has left the station.’
The endorsement had come as a surprise to Obama because he and Pelosi had been in ‘regular communication’ as it appeared then 81-year-old Biden was nearing the decision to drop out of the race, and ‘they agreed Harris should not simply be handed the nomination unchallenged,’ Karl wrote.
‘Therefore, Obama and Pelosi – arguably the two most influential figures in the Democratic Party – had privately agreed to abstain from making any endorsements,’ the longtime ABC News reporter said.
The president had a shockingly awful debate against Trump on June 27, 2024, followed by an uneven sit-down with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, in which he couldn’t say if he had watched his debate performance after the fact.
He then made several eyebrow-raising gaffes, including calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘President Putin’ at the NATO summit and referring to Harris as ‘Vice President Trump’.
Those fumbles didn’t help Biden address mental competency concerns, and then he contracted COVID-19 during a trip to Las Vegas, leaving him so physically frail that it appeared Secret Service agents had to help him get into a black SUV that whisked him to his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, vacation home so he could recover.
It was from there that he decided to abort his reelection bid – putting out a statement on July 21 – and then endorsing Harris shortly thereafter.
Around 1 pm the next day, Pelosi endorsed Harris, leaving Obama miffed.
‘The former president wanted to know what had happened. Why had Pelosi issued a statement endorsing Harris so soon? Hadn’t he and Pelosi agreed days earlier that party leaders anointing the vice president as Biden’s replacement would be a mistake?’ Karl wrote.
A source close to Obama told Karl that the former president wasn’t actually angry at Pelosi over the endorsement, characterizing the conversation as a ‘good-natured ribbing’.
But the source close to the California congresswoman remembered it differently, believing Obama sounded ‘genuinely irritated’ by Pelosi’s move, using the four-letter word to describe the tone.
A senior Biden adviser, who also worked in the Obama White House, told Karl that the real reason Obama didn’t want Pelosi to endorse Harris so quickly was that the former president didn’t think the vice president could win.
‘There’s only one Black Jesus,’ the senior Biden adviser quipped.
Someone even closer to Pelosi was also surprised by the former House Speaker’s decision: Pelosi’s own husband.
‘Kamala?’ Paul Pelosi asked his wife, Karl reported.
‘Don’t start with me,’ Nancy Pelosi replied in a conversation shortly after her endorsement of the vice president became public.
Pelosi had never been a big Harris fan and had privately told Biden in 2020 that she had reservations about him picking her fellow Californian as his running mate.
But with major Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and potential challengers like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer quickly backing Harris, ‘she had no choice,’ Karl wrote.
‘No other candidates had stepped forward – Kamala Harris was it. The only thing Pelosi could do was try to help her win the election,’ Karl said.
Obama and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama, made the same assessment days later, officially endorsing Harris in a campaign video five days after Biden exited the 2024 race.
Karl’s Retribution hits bookstores Tuesday.
