With the pace of presidential politics being somewhere around the speed of light, it’s easy to forget we are only two months removed from an unprecedented soft coup of the incumbent president. Following his disastrous debate performance in late June, Joe Biden faced an onslaught of pressure from Democratic Party elites and the press to step aside. While he stood firm for a time, a weekend visit from Chuck Schumer and an ominous threat from Nancy Pelosi made the difference.
SEE: The Nasty Move Pelosi Made to Force Biden Out
The rest is history. Kamala Harris was immediately showered with donor cash and without doing a single interview or holding a single press conference, the vice president was officially crowned the Democrat nominee in mid-August. That’s always been a bit of a vulnerability for a party that continually proclaims everyone who disagrees with them a “threat to democracy.” After all, how democratic was it to force out the man who got 14 million primary votes only to have insiders replace him with someone who didn’t receive a single vote?
But hey, when something isn’t defensible, there’s always the option to just blatantly lie about it. That’s the choice Pelosi recently made while seeking to defend her coup of Biden. Instead of just admitting it was an undemocratic process, she instead claimed that Harris “won” an “open primary.”
“We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it. Nobody else got in the race,” @SpeakerPelosi tells @kadiagoba. pic.twitter.com/y2O0JhKBgc
— Semafor (@semafor) September 18, 2024
REPORTER: You had reportedly said you wanted a sort of an open primary if Joe Biden stepped down. Did you change your mind because you saw all the excitement around Kamala Harris?
PELOSI: No, I didn’t change my mind. We had an open primary and she won it. Nobody else got in the race because she was politically astute, and that was the thought, let’s show our talent. We have a great bench, all these great people in the country, and she could, the president endorsed her, and that’s a big deal because Joe Biden is the most consequential president in modern times. He accomplished so much more. I mean, even Barack Obama in his eight years in service would admit that in the short period of time that Joe Biden the majority, which was two years of his four-year term.
There are two major bits of absurd gaslighting in that statement, but I’ll start with the most obvious one. Kamala Harris did not win an open primary. How do I know? Because there never was one. No one else “got in the race” because there was no race to get into. What would any other Democrat even have been declaring for? Had the party actually decided to hold a month-long open primary, there’s no doubt there would have been challengers to Harris, especially given her assumed liabilities as a candidate at the time.
Instead, Harris stepped in as the presumptive nominee right away. The donors lined up behind her, and within days, she had enough “pledged delegates” from the party’s power structure to ensure her ascension. Not a single primary voter cast a ballot for Kamala Harris. Those are the facts, and Pelosi suggesting otherwise is dishonest tripe meant to mislead.
Remember when the press used to care about “misinformation?” Did this Semafor “journalist” even bother to ask when this “open primary” was declared? What dates were set for it to occur? When were the votes cast? The rebuttals to Pelosi’s ridiculous falsehood were innumerable, and from what I can tell, not a single one was presented. Instead, the audience cheered and that was it.
Then there’s the second thing Pelosi said, which was to claim that Joe Biden is the most “consequential president in modern history.” That’s absolute nonsense, but let’s assume it’s true. So…why isn’t he the nominee?
That’s the question no journalist will dare ask any Democrat when they make that statement. If Biden is mentally and physically fit, and that’s the story that is continuing to be told as evidenced by the fact that he remains the sitting president, then why would the “most consequential president in modern history” not be running for re-election? The disconnect is a mile wide, and it’s astonishing that the press not only continues to ignore it, but they are actively helping cover it up with softball sessions like the one presented by Semafor.
We know the answer. Biden isn’t mentally or physically fit to remain president. He was forced out specifically because his brain melted on national television, and Harris was then coronated without so much as a sniff of a democratic process. Pelosi is shamelessly lying for claiming otherwise.
