Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in some parts new York In the Times’ podcast interview published Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s election loss was blamed on President Joe Biden’s late exit from the presidential race and Democrats’ failure to hold a primary.

Pelosi told “The Interview” host Lulu Garcia-Navarro:“If the President (Biden) had come out earlier, there would have been other candidates in the race,” the newspaper said in a report about the interview on Thursday. The full change won’t be released until Saturday.

“The expectation was that if the president stepped aside, there would be an open primary,” Pelosi said.

“And as I said, Kamala could have done that, I think she would have been successful in that and would have been stronger in the future. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president approved it.” was performing. “If it had happened much earlier it would have been different,” he added.

Pelosi worked behind the scenes to persuade Biden to drop out of the presidential race after his performance at the debate on CNN, ABC News reported.

in November 2022 When ABC’s “This Week” co-host George Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi this question: “Do you think President Biden should run again,” he replied, “Yes, I do. I mean, President Biden has been a great president for our country. He’s accomplished a lot.”

The Times reported that Pelosi was also interested in the issue Independent Senator Bernie Sanders says: After Harris’ loss, he said, “It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working-class people sees the working class abandoning them.”

“Bernie Sanders didn’t win,” he said. “With all due respect, and I have great respect for him for what he represents, I don’t respect the fact that he says the Democratic Party is abandoning working-class families.”

Democrats suggested cultural issues were more to blame for their losses among working-class voters, the newspaper reported.

“Guns, God and homosexuals, that’s what they say,” he reportedly said. “Guns are a problem, homosexuals are a problem, and now they’re making the transgender issue such an important issue among their priorities that in some communities, what they call God is what we call a woman’s right to choose.”