Obama Fumed at Nancy Pelosi for Endorsing Kamala Harris So Quickly in Tense Phone Call: ‘What the F*ck Did You Just Do?’
Former President Barack Obama was reportedly left blindsided and fuming when Nancy Pelosi broke ranks to endorse Kamala Harris as the 2024 Democratic presidential pick within hours of former President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 race.
According to a forthcoming book by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, Pelosi, describing Harris as “brilliantly astute” and expressing “full confidence” that she could defeat then-Republican nominee Donald Trump, made her move less than 24 hours after Biden announced he would not seek re-election.
Karl writes in his new book, Retribution, that Obama, who had urged senior Democrats to let “a process” unfold before rallying behind any successor, was “not happy.”
“The Obamas were not happy,” a Pelosi confidant told Karl. “This person summed up Obama’s message to Pelosi as, essentially, ‘What the f*ck did you just do?'”
In excerpts seen by the Daily Mail and New York Post, Karl details how Obama and Pelosi had privately agreed to avoid early endorsements and that both were wary of “anointing” Harris without an open primary. When Pelosi acted anyway, Obama phoned her directly.
“That train has left the station,” she reportedly shot back, pointing to Biden’s own swift backing of Harris.
A source close to Obama insisted to Karl that the exchange was more “good-natured ribbing” than rage, though another Pelosi ally said he sounded “genuinely irritated.”
Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the excerpt on Tuesday morning, Karl explained the source of Obama’s frustration was a that he and Pelosi had a “pact” to run a primary after working together to get Biden to drop out of the race.
“So the two of them had been basically working to try to get, you know, Biden out of the race. And they had been and they had been adamant that when he gets out, we need to have some kind of a process, whether it be a mini flash primary something, a meeting of delegates, something, something. And don’t just hand it over to Kamala Harris. And they had had a pact on this,” he told the hosts.
He continued: “[Harris] gets out and everybody endorses her within hours. You know, [Josh] Shapiro, [Gretchen] Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, they’re all endorsing her within hours. Pelosi actually waits till the next day. But she sees that there’s nothing to hold the tide. So she puts out the endorsement, gets this phone call. I actually spoke to somebody who overheard the phone call. And what Obama says is basically: ‘Nancy, what was that all about?’ And clearly irritated.”
Karl added: “Now, I’ve spoken to people close to President Obama who say he was just kind of giving her — joshing with her and giving her a hard time. I’ve spoken to another, you know, person who is very close to Pelosi who says, ‘No… he was angry.’ The clear message was, ‘Why did you do that?'”
A message left with the Obama Foundation by Mediaite was not immediately returned on Tuesday.
The former president waited five days before publicly endorsing Harris, a pause that reportedly fueled speculation he doubted her ability to win.
By the time heavyweights from the Clintons to Newsom had fallen in line, Pelosi had, as Karl writes, “no choice. The only thing she could do was try to help her win the election.”
