Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have broken bread.
In his new book, the former president said he met with the former House speaker over an Italian lunch in hopes of mending a close friendship that deeply ruptured after she pushed him to end his bid for reelection . He acknowledged it was “hard to take so many old friends turning on me.”
“We had been through too much together to allow a rift to go un-mended,” Biden wrote. “We talked about life and family and politics and fell into the old rhythms of friendship. And I’m glad we did.”
While Biden said the two had seen one another from a distance at a few events, they hadn’t spoken to one another since the day she came to see him in the White House and bluntly told him he would lose the presidency if continued to seek reelection. Pelosi has repeatedly declined to discuss the status of their relationship.
In the new memoir, “Promise Me, America,” Biden’s words make clear he’s still welling with anger about Democrats pushing him to end his reelection bid after his disastrous debate performance . Biden describes Pelosi “working furiously behind the scenes to get elected officials and Biden delegates to defect.”
“Our last real conversation had been the one in which she told me it was my decision whether to continue my run for president, making it clear what her decision was,” Biden wrote. He added, “We didn’t discuss that episode,” when they finally sat down together for lunch, but added he was pleased they were back on speaking terms.
During her own book tour, Jill Biden said her husband and Pelosi exchanged peace at Tatiana Schlossberg’s funeral. “He went back to see Nancy and I found out later … they said ‘Peace, let’s be friends,’” Jill Biden said in an interview with MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.”
The former president also sheds glimmers of new light on the final days of his reelection campaign on July 13, 2024, when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer visited Biden at home in Delaware to advise him that his support in the party had collapsed.
“I have to admit it was personally hard to take so many old friends turning on me. I told Schumer he had a lot of gumption (I may have said it differently at the time), coming to my home and telling me to get out of the race,” Biden wrote. “Loyalty matters to me. If I give you my word, I stick with you. If I say I’m with you, I’m with you to the end.”
The book, which is scheduled to be released next week, was purchased by CNN at a bookstore on Thursday. For the past week, Biden’s office has been releasing selected excerpts from the memoir.
While much of the book is about Biden’s political life and presidency, he offers an unapologetic window into the tailspin of his reelection campaign after a CNN debate with Donald Trump in Atlanta. He describes the event as “a terrible night,” but struck a defensive tone over the reaction and fallout.
“Party unity was weighing heavily on my mind. I believed the Democratic rank and file were still with me and would be with me all the way to November,” Biden wrote. “But it was clear that major Democratic elected officials and leaders weren’t.”
He added: “I had arrived at exactly what I had most hoped to avoid: a divided party.”
He offers a minute-by-minute accounting of the day he decided to end his reelection bid, with diary-like notations of whom he called and when on July 21, 2004.
“At 1:04 pm, I broke the news to Jen O’Malley Dillon, my campaign chair,” he wrote. Seven minutes later, he wrote, he called Vice President Kamala Harris to tell her the news.
“She asked me several times if I was sure I wanted to do this,” Biden said. “I told her I was.”
He called a long list of members of congress, governors and other longtime supporters, including former President Bill Clinton at 3:14 pm. Not included in his calls was former President Barack Obama, with whom he was also furious for working behind the scenes to persuade him to drop his bid for a second term.
In a book spanning a little more than 400 pages, Biden writes about his rise to power in the Senate, the vice presidency and, finally, the White House. He includes the letter Trump left him in the Oval Office and for the first time reveals what he wrote Trump four years later.
As I take leave of his sacred office I wish you and your family all the best in the next four years. The American people — and people around the world — look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace and grace for our nation.
May God bless you and guide you and He has blessed and guided our beloved country since its founding.
