Nancy Pelosi has become a bit of a knucklehead …

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is ticking off some House Democrats for publicly opining on what her party did wrong in 2024.

Why it matters: Pelosi needs to let House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) lead the caucus, Democrats tell Axios.

• “She needs to take a seat,” said one senior Democratic lawmaker.
• “Making scattershot comments is not just unhelpful, it’s damaging,” said the lawmaker.

“Hakeem has been tremendously graceful and respectful of her, but I don’t think she is being respectful of him,” said a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

• Both lawmakers insisted on anonymity.
• Pelosi still instills fear in the members she led for two decades.

Zoom in: The mounting frustration with Pelosi exists in the private conversations among House Democrats in various corners of the caucus.

• The trouble started when Pelosi agreed to an interview with The New York Times in which she suggested Biden should have dropped out of the race sooner.
• Had that happened, “there may have been other candidates in the race,” she said.
• Her comments ignited another round of finger-pointing and blame-shiftingbetween the Biden and Harris camps.

The intrigue: The NYT wrote up their story on Friday but didn’t post the full interview until Saturday.

• The transcript had more caveats and compliments than the initial article indicated, but it didn’t really matter. Pelosi had started a fire.