Barack Obama's Vicious Call to Nancy Pelosi After 'Surprise' Kamala Harris Endorsement Exposed — 'What the F**k Did You Just Do?'
Barack Obama was not happy with Nancy Pelosi's 'rushed' endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Oct. 28 2025, Published 2:25 p.m. ET
Barack Obama was not pleased when Nancy Pelosi hastily endorsed Kamala Harris after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election race, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
And the former president made his opinion profanely known.
Obama wanted to make the decision with Pelosi together.
Just one day after Biden exited the race, former Speaker of the House Pelosi announced her backing of Vice President Harris.
But Biden's old boss felt that endorsement came far too quickly.
"The Obamas were not happy," a Pelosi confidant told veteran ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl for his just-released book Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, which is all about the recent election.
"This person summed up Obama's message to Pelosi as, essentially, 'What the f--- did you just do?'"
Karl writes that the former president wasn't interested in simply handing the race over to Harris, and instead pushed for an in-depth "process" to determine the Democratic nominee.
Outraged Obama
The former House Speaker endorsed Harris a day after Joe Biden dropped out.
The speedy endorsement surprised Obama, who thought he and Pelosi had been in "regular communication" about the future of the Democratic party, as it began to appear inevitable that the then 81-year-old Biden was planning to call it a day.
Karl writes: "They agreed Harris should not simply be handed the nomination unchallenged."
"Therefore, Obama and Pelosi - arguably the two most influential figures in the Democratic Party - had privately agreed to abstain from making any endorsements."
However, once Biden announced his stunning decision to end his campaign, Pelosi told Obama, "That train has left the station."
Hurry for Harris
Obama did not want to hand the nomination to Harris unchallenged.
While Pelosi jumped on the Kamala bandwagon, Harris confessed she was stunned when Biden himself appeared to drag his feet before formally supporting her.
In her own book recollecting the 2024 election, 107 Days, Harris revealed her frustration over Biden's plan to wait a few days to endorse her, so he could effectively bask in the attention himself for a while.
Harris argued that waiting would have raised doubts in voters' and donors' minds, and ultimately convinced him to cut to the chase.
However, when Biden spoke to the nation to explain his decision, Harris recalls, "It was almost nine minutes into the eleven-minute address before he mentioned me."
The same thing happened a few weeks later at the Democratic National Convention.
"He spoke for nearly an hour, detailing the accomplishments of our administration," Harris wrote. "It was a legacy speech for him, not an argument for me, and he was entitled to it. But if we waited for some personal stories about working with me and what qualities he had seen that led him to endorse me, they weren't there."
'People Hate Joe Biden'
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Biden took his time before endorsing Harris.
In the first few days of her campaign, Harris admitted she was still getting her feet wet and finding her own voice. At the start, her standard stump speech would include glowing remarks about her former boss, who is now battling cancer.
"I spent the first third of my remarks effusively praising him before I launched into my own campaign speech," Harris wrote in her book. "I would do that for several weeks until my campaign strategists urged me to stop: 'It's time this campaign was about you.'"
However, Obama's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, who was now working to help elect Harris, put it more bluntly when he told her point-blank, "People hate Joe Biden."
