CNN
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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told President Joe Biden in a private conversation that polls show he cannot beat President Donald Trump and that if Biden continues to seek a second term, it could jeopardize Democrats’ chances of winning the House of Representatives in November, according to four sources briefed on the call.
Biden fired back, telling Pelosi he’d seen polls that showed Biden could win, according to one of the sources. Another source said Biden was getting defensive about the polls. At one point, Pelosi asked for a call with Mike Donilon, a longtime Biden adviser, to discuss the data.
The call marks the second known conversation between the California senator and Biden since the president’s disastrous debate on June 27. The exact date of the conversation is unclear, but one source said it took place within the last week. Pelosi and Biden also spoke in early July.
Neither source would say whether Ms Pelosi told Mr Biden during the conversation that he should drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
Pelosi has listened to her colleagues’ concerns in the weeks since the debate, causing controversy when she said in an interview last week, “It’s up to the president to decide whether or not he wants to run. Time is running out, and we’re all urging the president to make a decision.”
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Asked for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates did not respond to details of CNN’s report of a recent call between Pelosi and Biden. “President Biden is the party’s nominee. He is committed to winning and looks forward to working with congressional Democrats to pass a 100-day package of measures to support working families,” Bates said.
A spokesman for Pelosi told CNN the former House speaker has been in California since Friday and has not spoken to Biden since then.
“Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the President of the United States,” a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi said. “Unfortunately, an onslaught of anonymously sourced media outlets has misrepresented the content of the Speaker’s conversations with the President.”
