According to her sources, Obama “made a point of not requesting to speak with Joe Biden and “did not want to contact him,” she explained. Instead, Pelosi led the charge. “Nancy Pelosi was… orchestrating it,” Palmeri continued. “She was in contact with Obama, but they knew that Obama was not going to have influence on [Biden] because of the last time that they talked back in 2015 when he had convinced him not to run for office.”
Additionally, Palmeri said it was not just public bravado from the Biden campaign that he intended on staying in the race. She described the incumbent as “very, very dug in at that time,” but even rougher waters were ahead.
“I was told, though, that if he did not drop out by Sunday [July 21], that that following week was going to get increasingly nastier, especially from Hill leaders,” she noted. “There would just be an onslaught of lawmakers calling for him to step down, it would become aggressive, and maybe one of them would have said something like that publicly.”
She said Pelosi, Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries all would have been “hands off” in allowing members of the caucus to speak out freely against the president.
