SACRAMENTO, California — Nancy Pelosi said those close to Joe Biden during his reelection campaign should have shared what they knew about his mental acuity — and confirmed she had private conversations with him about her polling concerns.

“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information. Whoever knew,” Pelosi, the former House speaker said at POLITICO’s The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit on Tuesday. “There was staff saying the family knew. The family said the staff.”

Pelosi’s remarks, in an interview with POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin, reflect some of the most detailed reflections she’s shared publicly about the role she played in convincing Biden to not to run for another term. She has long insisted that she didn’t demand Biden drop out of the race, instead urging him to reconsider polling that showed his path against Donald Trump was fraught.

“I only said to President Biden, ‘I’ve come to question the polling that you have and how your campaign is being conducted,” Pelosi said. “Because, at that point, 72 percent of the American people didn’t think he should run.”

The former speaker said she also urged Biden, during their private meeting at the White House, to release a diagnostic test from a doctor to prove to the public that he could “serve the next term.”

“We’re Catholic, we’re prayerful, we had our rosaries and all of that,” Pelosi said. “We had a lovely meeting. It was only the two of us.”

Pelosi recalled her reaction to his disastrous performance during a televised debate with Trump in June 2024. “When you think of the debate and how sad that was, that’s really when we learned,” she said. “I didn’t know, and I think he had his sort of ups and downs.”

Pelosi, who by then was no longer speaker, said she had only seen Biden in person a few times the prior year and hadn’t witnessed his decline.

The former speaker, one of the Democratic Party’s foremost tacticians, also spoke about the upcoming midterm elections, saying she was optimistic that Democrats — who need to pick up three seats to win the House — will have a wave year.

“I’d rather see 10 times that, like 30,” Pelosi quipped. “Thirty is my goal.”

But Pelosi was reluctant to speak about the succession fight for her seat in San Francisco. Pelosi, who’s represented the city in Congress for nearly 40 years, has endorsed city Supervisor Connie Chan and is using her formidable political operation to try to sink Scott Wiener, a prominent state senator.

“I don’t want to talk against anyone,” Pelosi said. “I’m for Connie Chan because I think she will be the best. I know the Congress better than anybody, says she immodestly.”

Pelosi declined to say who she might support for president in 2028, though she said Democrats will have a strong bench. She did, however, speak glowingly about California Gov. Gavin Newsom, her longtime political ally and a likely contender.

“He’s just been remarkable,” Pelosi said. “His intellectual resources he brings to it, his strategic thinking, again his knowledge of issues is so remarkable.”

Pelosi also heaped praise on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another potential presidential contender. Pelosi dismissed reports about early tension between the two lawmakers after Ocasio-Cortez was first elected in 2018. Pelosi suggested that tensions were due to staff around the lawmaker — an apparent illusion to Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff who unsuccessfully ran to succeed Pelosi in San Francisco’s primary election.

“I think that she has been so operational, and it’s just wonderful. Wonderful,” Pelosi said of Ocasio-Cortez. “I know it’s a joy to work with her.”

Marisa Guerra Echeverria contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO — Vice President Kamala Harris is sticking to her talking points about abortion on the campaign trail — even as controversy swirls around President Joe Biden’s age and Donald Trump’s criminal conviction.

At a campaign fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, Harris didn’t address a bruising report from The Wall Street Journal that raised new concerns about Biden’s mental fitness. The piece quoted former Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy asserting that Biden is “not the same person” due to his mental decline.

Nor did Harris mention Trump’s conviction last week on 34 felony counts over his role in a hush-money scheme. She avoided the verdict despite holding an event in San Francisco one day before the former president was scheduled to hold his own fundraiser in town, with tech billionaires David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya.

What Harris did and didn’t say is notable given how Team Biden has increasingly sought to use her as a messenger along the trail: Though Harris has struggled to buck her poor approval ratings in national polls, the campaign still sees her as a way to boost enthusiasm among two key constituencies that, polls suggest, will help determine if Democrats hold the White House: women and Black voters.

Harris’ brief 10-minute speech was, instead, intensely focused on her argument that a second Trump presidency poses an existential threat to abortion access, the rights of LGBTQ+ people, voting rights for people of color and other freedoms.

“Everything is at stake in this election,” Harris told a boisterous crowd of about 100 donors crowded into The Chapel, a trendy concert venue and bar in the Mission neighborhood.

It's not like Harris hasn't jabbed Trump over his conviction ("The reality is cheaters don’t like getting caught," she told late night host Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week). Still, her decision to not gloat over the verdict, even when speaking to liberal crowds in the Bay Area, is notable.

Her San Francisco speech was another example of how Harris has been laser-focused on framing the stakes that the presidential election poses for Democrats, especially on women’s reproductive rights, as she tries to boost Biden’s embattled campaign. Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Harris has emerged as the administration’s top surrogate on abortion.

Harris has relied on the same abortion-centered message as she speaks to voters in crucial swing states — including Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada — as well as the party's liberal base in deep-blue regions like the Bay Area.

Assemblymember Mia Bonta was part of an envoy that greeted Harris on the tarmac at the airport on Wednesday and accompanied her to a fundraiser at a home in the Oakland Hills, where donors paid a minimum of $5,000 per person to hear Harris speak and mingle under a backyard tent with panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay. (Harris was also greeted at the airport by Attorney General Rob Bonta, Mia’s husband, and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis.)

In their conversations, Mia Bonta said the vice president was still focused on her concerns about Trump’s threat to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, with just 153 days left to go until Election Day. “We overemphasize age and don’t focus on basic things like not having felons for president,” Bonta told Playbook afterward.

Carrie Barnes, a vice chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, attended Harris’ speech at The Chapel and said it felt like the vice president is finding her “flow” as she drives home the ways that Trump could fundamentally change basic civil rights.

“It’s smart for Kamala to talk directly about kitchen table issues,” Barnes told Playbook. “[Biden’s] values are the same regardless of his age.”

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