House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi may be playing one of the most consequential roles of her career this week, that of tough-love confidant to the president at a pivotal moment in the 2024 race.

As CNN first reported Thursday morning, Pelosi had a phone call with Biden earlier this week in which she forcefully laid out to President Biden that polls show that he can not win the election. CNN has multiple sources who were briefed on the call, but a spokesperson for Pelosi tried to deny it, saying she had been in California since last Friday and had not spoken to the president since.

The New York Times separately confirmed details of the call, quoting one anonymous Pelosi confidant saying, "She does not think he can win."

Reportedly, when Pelosi said the polling data was clear, showing he could not win the race, the president pushed back and said he'd seen polling that suggested otherwise.

This is when Pelosi called in one of the few people Biden has reportedly been listening to in recent weeks, longtime aide and campaign strategist Mike Donilon.

"Put Donilon on the phone," Pelosi said, according to the Times' reporting. Then she demanded, "Show me what polls."

"The former speaker is intimately familiar with the minutiae of campaigns from her years following House races district by district, and she has been marshaling her knowledge of the political map, polling data and fund-raising information to press her case with Mr. Biden," the Times reports.

This is the first confirmed report we know of in which a top Democrat has had a blunt and unvarnished conversation with the president, who by all accounts has been unmoved by his party's sheer panic since the June 27 debate.

Pelosi was among the first top Democrats to open the conversation about Biden stepping down on July 2, though she did it in the gentlest of terms at the time, saying only that it was "fair" to question whether Biden's debate performance was the result of an ongoing "condition." She reportedly had a private conversation with the president around that time as well.

House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have both reportedly had their own conversations with Biden in the past week, and we don't know the details of those conversations. All three have reportedly urged party bosses to put the breaks on formalizing Biden's nomination, something that they were rumored to be trying to do weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

A spokesperson for Jeffries put out the vaguest of statements about the content of the conversation, saying, "On behalf of the House Democratic Caucus, he directly expressed the full breadth of insight, perspective and conclusions reached about the path forward — after extensive colleague to colleague discussions."

As the Times reports, while the details of the three party leaders' conversations remain private, as do the full scope of the conversation Pelosi had with Biden, "none has denied the nature of the talks, issued a statement endorsing him or called on their colleagues to rally behind him as the party nominee."

The Times separately reported Wednesday that Biden was "more receptive" to talking about stepping aside, and was "willing to listen" to arguments on the topic, but a source still said he had given no indication yet that he was changing course.

Another ally of Biden, former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, came out with some of his toughest words yet for the president during the Morning Joe broadcast Thursday morning, in response to the disastrous poll numbers that were released this week.

"It’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing,” Scarborough said. “This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out... Joe Biden deserves better. He deserves better than he is getting from those closest to him."

Previously: Nancy Pelosi Joins Chorus of Democrats Expressing Cautious Concern About Biden's Candidacy

Top image: U.S. President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Freedom to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on May 3, 2024 in Washington, DC. President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civilian honor, to 19 individuals including political leaders, civil rights icons and other influential cultural icons. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

This post has been updated with Joe Scarborough's comments.