Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested the country should add a statue of President Joe Biden to Mount Rushmore, an iconic monument that features statues of four former presidents including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Ms Pelosi said Biden, 81, is “such an important president of the United States, a Mount Rushmore-like president,” in a clip aired on the CBS Sunday Morning show.
The 84-year-old, when asked if Mr Biden deserves to have his face permanently etched in stone at the famous South Dakota National Monument, said: “You have Teddy Roosevelt. And he’s wonderful. I don’t say to remove him. But you can add Biden.” It is worth noting that the monument was completed in 1941, a year before Mr Biden was born.
This comes just weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, with some reports claiming that Ms Pelosi had told the US President that he could destroy the Democrats’ chances of winning the election in November due to his age. However, the politician defended the reports and said that Mr Biden was “at the top of his game in whatever decision he wanted to make.”
Notably, after Mr Biden’s debate performance against Mr Trump, Ms Pelosi initially endorsed him, but then publicly said he needed to decide whether to run for re-election, even though he had already announced he was still contesting. Later, she told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ that “it is up to the president to decide whether to run,” two days after Mr Biden wrote a letter to Democratic members in early July in which he reiterated that he was “firmly committed” to the race.
According to a CNN report, the California representative had reportedly asked Mr Biden’s senior adviser Mike Donilon to connect her to the President on a call, which would have been the second conversation between the two since Mr Biden’s poor performance in a debate with Donald Trump. However, Ms Pelosi denied any such claims. “No, I was not the leader of any pressure (campaign). Let me say things I did not do: I did not call one person. I did not call one person. I could always say to them, ‘I never called anybody.'”
“No. My whole point was that whatever he decides, we have to run a much more aggressive campaign,” she said. “What I’m saying is that I believe the president will make a fair choice for the country, whoever it is – and I said that – whoever it is, we’ll go along with it,” Ms Pelosi said.
According to reports, the US President seems to be angry with Ms Pelosi over her alleged involvement in obstructing his re-election campaign. Reacting to this, the US politician said that “she knows I love her very much.” The former speaker also said that she “has not publicly shared any conversation with the President of the United States.”