Former President Barack Obama was furious with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, over her swift endorsement of Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee replacing Joe Biden in 2024, the Daily Mail reported Monday.
“The Obamas were not happy” with Pelosi’s quick-trigger endorsement, given that the two-term president and Pelosi had a pact not to endorse right away once Biden dropped out of the race, according to the new book “Retribution” by ABC News White House reporter Jonathan Karl.
The Daily Mail obtained an advance copy.
Obama and Pelosi had agreed that Harris, then the vice president, “should not be handed the nomination unchallenged,” Karl wrote. “Obama and Pelosi — arguably the two most influential figures in the Democratic Party — had privately agreed to abstain from making any endorsements.”
That’s why Obama was taken aback when Pelosi endorsed Harris on July 22, 2024, just one day after Biden dropped out, the report said.
A Pelosi confidant told Karl that a person familiar with the Obama-Pelosi phone call “summed up Obama’s message to Pelosi as, essentially, ‘What the [expletive] did you just do?'”
Obama, according to the book, sounded “genuinely irritated.”
At issue for Obama is that he didn’t think Harris could beat Republican nominee Donald Trump in the general election. He was right about that, as Trump won back the White House by a margin of 312 to 226.
“There’s only one Black Jesus,” a senior Biden adviser told Karl for the book.
Even Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, questioned her endorsement of Harris, according to the report.
“Kamala?” Paul Pelosi asked his wife, according to the book.
“Don’t start with me,” Nancy Pelosi responded to her husband.
“No other candidates had stepped forward — Kamala Harris was it. The only thing Pelosi could do was try to help her win the election,” according to the book.
Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama endorsed Harris five days after Biden dropped out.
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