Nancy Pelosi Says ‘We’ll See’ About Democrats’ Concerns About Joe Biden

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “we’ll see” when asked during an interview on Sunday about some Democratic congressional members’ concerns about President Joe Biden running for reelection after his lackluster debate performance against former President Donald Trump.

Biden and Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faced off against each other on Thursday night in the first presidential debate of this election cycle. The debate, hosted by CNN in Atlanta, featured no live audience.

Both candidate’s performance has been criticized, but Democratic voters and politicians expressed discontent with Biden’s performance citing his stumbling and at times incoherent and hard to hear responses as worrisome. A Biden aide, meanwhile, told Newsweek late Thursday night that the president was battling a cold during the debate.

John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent, stated in the outlet’s debate recap that Biden’s performance sparked a “deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party.” Some members of the Democratic Party are considering replacing him as its nominee, however there is no indication of who would be proposed as a candidate and Biden’s campaign has not signaled stepping down.

In a Sunday morning interview on CNN’s State of the Union with co-host Dana Bash, who moderated the presidential debate alongside Jake Tapper, Pelosi, a California Democrat, conceded that “it was a bad night.”

“Let’s not sugarcoat that, it was a bad night, it was a great presidency,” the congresswoman said.

She noted that Biden’s presidential record should matter more than his debate performance. Pelosi attributed some of Biden’s debate struggles to having to engage with Trump’s repeated false statements.

She described the challenge as “a night where somebody is going to just misrepresent the facts completely and then the other person has to negate that.”

She added: “To have a debate where you have to spend half your time negating what he said because he knows nothing about the truth. On one side of the screen you have integrity, the other side you have dishonesty. Again, it was a bad night, let’s move on from that.”

During the debate, Trump made false claims about the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, his environmental record, abortion and the economy. While there were misleading statements from both sides, the former president made more than Biden. CNN counted over 30 false statements made by Trump while the network said Biden made at least nine false or misleading statements during the debate.

When asked by Bash about U.S. House and Senate Democrats who are worried about how Biden’s debate performance and overall perception might impact down-ballot voting in their constituencies, Pelosi said, “We definitely will win the House of Representatives.”

Congress is currently split by narrow margins, with Republicans holding the House majority and Democrats leading the Senate. All House seats and 33 Senate seats are up for election in November, with an additional Senate seat up for special election.

Pelosi added on Sunday that following the debate “donors doubled down and said we absolutely have to have the Congress.”

Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco in Congress for 37 years, said, “Members are always concerned about the top of the ticket. That’s just the way it is.”

Bash interjected to ask if they are more concerned now following the debate, to which Pelosi said, “We’ll see. You can’t make a judgement after one night.”

Newsweek reached out to Pelosi’s press secretary and Biden’s campaign for comment via email on Sunday.

Since the debate, Trump has been pulling ahead in national polls as reported by FiveThirtyEight’s aggregator. Several days before the debate, the national aggregator showed Biden leading Trump by a narrow 0.1 to 0.3 points. As of Sunday afternoon, it shows Trump ahead of Biden by 1.3 points.

Meanwhile, a CBS/YouGov poll released on Sunday shows a 10 percentage point drop among Democrats who believe Biden should run for reelection following his debate performance.

The poll conducted from June 28 to 29 found that 54 percent of 382 registered Democratic voters think Biden should be running for president again, while 46 percent believed he should not. Ninety-five percent of 175 registered Democrats said Biden’s age was a reason that he should not run for reelection, while 5 percent said it was not. Biden is 81 years old, while Trump is 78.

It is unclear what the margin of error for the subgroup of registered Democrats is, but the full poll sample, which is 1,130 registered voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.