Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said “time is running short” for President Joe Biden to decide if he will run for reelection, following his disastrous recent debate performance against Donald Trump. Biden has already insisted he will not drop out of the race.
Commenting in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Democratic heavyweight Pelosi admitted the party is “not in lockstep” regarding Biden’s campaign, before heaping praise on the president for his appearance at a NATO leaders’ summit held in Washington this week.
When asked directly whether Biden has her support to head the Democratic ticket, she answered: “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We are all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.”
“He is beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make his decision,” Pelosi added. “I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is.”
Democratic donors and officials have increasingly urged the 81-year-old Biden to end his campaign after the debacle against Republic rival Trump two weeks ago, although the US leader has insisted that only “God Almighty” could convince him to do so.
Pelosi was speaking on the ‘Morning Joe’ program, which Biden has described as his favorite political news show. She was interviewed alongside Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a self-exiled Belarusian politician who came to prominence in 2020 as a leader of a failed attempt to oust President Alexander Lukashenko in a wave of mass protests over his reelection to office.
The Democratic Party is scheduled to formally pick its nominee for the November ballot during a national convention in mid-August in Chicago. The party leadership effectively skipped the primary process in Biden’s favor, with some states canceling their ballots altogether. Politicians who sought to challenge the president’s claim to the nomination have described the measures as anti-democratic.
Biden claims that he is running because he has the best chances of beating Trump, the presumed Republican nominee. Last December, however, he said that “probably 50” other Democrats could do the same. The party has claimed that a second Trump presidency poses an existential threat to the American democratic system.