Nancy Pelosi called Joe Biden "very sharp" and "always on the ball" on live television in February 2024.
Four months later she told a close friend he was "not the same Joe Biden" – and then covered it up.
What she said in Sacramento is the most brazen thing she's ever done in 40 years of Washington politics.
Pelosi Called Biden Sharp on CNN While Privately Admitting His Cognitive Decline
In February 2024, Nancy Pelosi went on CNN with Anderson Cooper and called Joe Biden a "very sharp president."
She said anyone betting against him because of age was doing so "at their peril."
Four months later, she privately told a friend he was "not the same Joe Biden" after seeing him at a White House ceremony.
That's not ignorance. That's a cover-up.
Author Chris Whipple documented it in his book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
According to Whipple, Pelosi visited the White House in May 2024 to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was "startled by how much the president had aged."
She told a close friend she "couldn't shake the realization that Joe Biden was a shadow of himself."
One month later – one month – she called the Wall Street Journal's explosive report on Biden's decline a "hit piece."
That report drew on interviews with more than 45 lawmakers and staffers from both parties, who described a president who mumbled through meetings, blanked on his own policies, and leaned on staff to field questions asked directly to him.
Pelosi called that a hit piece.
How Pelosi Ran the Biden Cover-Up From the Inside
Standing at POLITICO's California Agenda Summit in Sacramento, Pelosi told the audience she only learned the truth at the June 2024 debate.
"When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that's really when we learned," she said.
When asked who knew about Biden's condition beforehand, she offered this: "There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff."
Not her. Never her.
Nancy Pelosi – close friend of the Bidens for decades, former Speaker of the House, the most powerful Democrat in Washington for a generation – had absolutely no idea.
The same Nancy Pelosi who, according to a separate book on the 2024 campaign, privately lobbied Biden not to debate Trump at all – not because she cared about democracy, but because she already knew what would happen if he stood next to Trump for 90 minutes.
She knew, she lied, and she blamed everyone else when it fell apart.
The Biden Mental Decline Cover-Up Cost Democrats the White House
Democrats didn't lose in 2024 just because of inflation or the border.
They lost because they ran a man they knew was incapacitated and spent two years telling the American public the opposite – then attacked anyone who reported the truth and called the journalism "hit pieces."
An anonymous Democrat senator admitted the obvious to Fox News after the debate: "The country saw what those of us who have had personal interactions with him have all known for the last two and a half years."
Two and a half years. Pelosi had personal interactions with Biden throughout that entire stretch.
Jill Biden, for her part, admitted to MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire this year that she genuinely doesn't know whether Joe could have served a second term. "I don't know the answer to that," she said – after insisting he could still win.
Then they installed Kamala Harris at the last possible moment and watched her lose in a landslide.
Nancy Pelosi stood in Sacramento and had the nerve to say that whoever knew should have acted.
She knew and it trying to rewrite history as her political career comes to an end.
Sources:
- Bob Hoge, "Pelosi Laughably Gaslights About Her Knowledge of Biden's Decline," RedState, August 11, 2026.
- Staff, "Pelosi: Those Who Knew of Biden's Decline 'Should Have Acted,'" Fox News, August 11, 2026.
- Victor Nava, "Pelosi Was Already 'Startled' by Biden's Cognitive Decline When She Slammed WSJ Report," Fox News, April 10, 2025.
- Staff, "Anonymous Democrat Senator Says Everyone's Known for Years Biden Has Mental Lapses," Fox News, July 5, 2024.
- Rebecca Downs, "Nancy Pelosi's Role in 2024 Election Looks Even Worse With Details From New Book," Townhall, April 10, 2025.
- Staff, "Nancy Pelosi Says Biden 'Very Sharp': 'He's Younger Than I Am,'" Fox News, February 12, 2024.