Pelosi urges Biden to ‘get out there’ and tout agenda

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stepped back from the spotlight when she announced she would no longer be a part of the House Democrats’ formal leadership team last year, but she’s not shying away from jumping into the 2024 presidential campaign.

Pelosi provided some pointed advice for longtime ally President Biden, who is seeking a second term.

“I think it’s time to get out there. We’ve had our holidays — the campaigns are beginning now; this is when people will pay attention,” Pelosi said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday. “People don’t vote for you because you deserve it, but what you have done that lends legitimacy to ‘this is what we will do.'”

Pelosi, 83, has been the only woman to serve as House Speaker. She notably clashed with former President Trump, who is seeking the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination despite mounting legal issues.

During the CNN interview, Pelosi repeatedly played up “kitchen table issues” as a selling point for Biden, even as public sentiment about the economy has lagged during his term.

Only referring to Trump as “what’s his name who is running for president,” which Bash confirmed was a moniker for Trump, Pelosi argued that “what happened on Jan. 6 was a manifestation of the assault on the personal freedoms that we have.”

“[Biden’s] message is about what we need to do as we go forward,” she said. “The kitchen table issues are our motivation and our mobilization.”

She declined to weigh in on Colorado and Maine’s recent decisions to exclude Trump from their primary ballots based on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, after he urged his supporters to go to the Capitol as lawmakers attempted to certify Biden’s election in 2020, resulting in a violent conflict.

“That’s up to the states,” Pelosi said. “I won’t go into the courts and the laws and all of that, different states have different laws.”

Pelosi, who is seeking reelection, is hitting the cable news circuit after taking a step back to give what she deemed a newer generation a chance at leading.

She has been a prominent advocate for Trump being held responsible for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack that forced Pelosi, then-Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers to be ushered to shelter in safe spaces as crowds chanted for their death outside the building.

On Trump, she said, “Martyrdom is his thing.”

“He cannot be absolved from his accountability on all of this. No one is above the law, and neither is he.”