WASHINGTON — Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi helped orchestrate President Biden’s campaign demise by playing “good cop, bad cop’’ — with Schumer literally hugging Biden as he told him to give up the fight and Pelosi warning “they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” sources say.

Eight days before the 81-year-old president sensationally exited the race, Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader and Biden’s former congressional colleague, paid him a rare visit in Rehoboth Beach, Del., for a 35-minute meeting, a source told The Post.

Schumer “opened by saying he was there out of love and affection and he came as a friend and colleague,” the source said. 

“Schumer delivered a personal appeal that focused on three points: the Biden legacy, the future of the country and the impact on Congress. He urged him to think about the Supreme Court.”

The Senate leader told Biden, “I do not expect you to walk out of this room making a decision, but I hope you will think about what I said.”

Biden told him, “I need another week,” the source said.

“At the conclusion of the heartfelt meeting Schumer and President Biden hugged.”

But Pelosi, a Dem California rep and former House Speaker, had tried a different tactic before Biden finally bowed out of the race Sunday.

During a contentious earlier phone call with Biden about his polling after the president’s dismal June 27 debate performance against former President Donald Trump, Pelosi’s concerns were only met with defensiveness, according to a report by CNN.

She ended up all but threatenng to rake Biden over the coals if he didn’t drop his campaign, the source said. 

“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a source told Politico. “It was about to be the hard way.”

Shortly after Schumer’s later meeting with Biden, Trump was grazed by a bullet at a rally in Butler, Pa., briefly halting the momentum against the president and giving him breathing room to make a last stab at stabilizing his faltering campaign.

Biden defiantly clung on — pointing to his clean sweep of primaries and caucuses this year — for the next week.

Then Sunday afternoon, he suddenly tweeted that he was abandoning course while recuperating from COVID-19 at his Delaware vacation home.

Other prominent Democrats such as former President Barack Obama had been working behind the scenes toward that end, sources have said. 

What to know about President Biden's decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race:

• President Biden announced Sunday he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race — after weeks of prominent Democrats and donors calling on him to withdraw following his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate.
• In a letter posted on X Sunday afternoon, Biden admitted that it is in the “best interest of my party and country” for him to step down as the Democratic nominee.
• Biden wrote that he intends to serve out the remainder of his term and will address the country on his decision later this week.
• In a follow-up X post, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the suddenly open Democratic nomination. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” the president wrote.
• Former President Donald Trump reacted to the news by labeling Biden the “worst president in the history of our country” in a call with CNN.

The final phase of Biden’s decision-making occurred among only an extremely small circle of people as he quarantined at the Delaware shore. The group included a cadre of longtime aides such as Steve Ricchetti, chief strategist and speechwriter Mike Donilon and Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s embattled top adviser.

“I need you and Mike at the house,” Biden told Ricchetti in a phone call on 4 p.m. Saturday, the New York Times reported.

Biden, Donilon and Ricchetti worked for hours Saturday on what would be the president’s now-famous withdrawal statement.

The president told Vice President Kamala Harris, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon that he was exiting the race in phone calls shortly before the announcement Sunday.

At 1:45 p.m. Sunday — just a minute before his bombshell tweet announcing the news to the world — Biden told other advisers including Anita Dunn, who controls West Wing communications. 

Zients then briefed other staff and Cabinet members.

Biden’s hoarse, raspy voice from the respiratory bug prompted him not to release a video of his decision, sources told the Times.

Fox News journalist Jacqui Heinrich ran into Ricchetti as he was exiting an elevator shortly after Biden’s announcement.

“Are you OK? Is he OK?” she asked Ricchetti. 

“He’s OK,” Ricchetti said with a slight smile.

Only days before standing down, Biden insisted he wasn’t going anywhere.

Biden told BET on Tuesday in Las Vegas that he was in “better physical shape” than Trump, 78, but that he might drop out “if I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, ‘You got this problem and that problem’ “ — as medical pundits postulated that Biden might have some degenerative condition such as Parkinson’s.

The interview only served to renew the push against him, with a torrent of congressional Democrats soon publicly calling on him to end his campaign — as he seemed to forget the names of former President Herbert Hoover and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The renewed groundswell started Wednesday with Rep. Adam Schiff, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman and current California Senate nominee who is close to Pelosi.

In the end, sources close to Biden said they believe he chose to step aside simply because of the likelihood of a landslide defeat, which could have wiped out down-ballot Democrats.

“I think he saw the writing on the wall with internal polling and lack of fundraising,” a source close to Biden told The Post. “[I’m] not sure threats by Pelosi were necessary.”

Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-founder of film studio DreamWorks, reportedly warned the president Wednesday that donor funds were drying up.

“It was withdrawal by a thousand cuts,” a Democratic source told The Post. “The polls cut. The random House members cut. Leadership — Chuck, Nancy, Hakeem [Jeffries of New York] cut. And then the staff,” the source said.

Harris, whom Biden endorsed to succeed him, faces an initial test of the support for her when Democratic delegates virtually vote on the party’s presidential nomination in early August, to meet an Aug. 7 Ohio ballot-access deadline. Delegates at the Democratic convention in Chicago on Aug. 19-22 can reopen balloting if opposition to Harris mounts.

Some sources close to Biden previously told The Post that they believed the president would only drop out if he believed Harris could defeat Trump. Her critics worry that she may be unable to do so especially because of her controversial assignment by Biden to reduce illegal immigration, which instead surged to new record highs.

“We are so f–ked,” a senior congressional Democratic source told The Post on Friday about Harris possibly leading the ticket. “Apparently the border czar who lets 10 million illegals in is going to win this election for us. Absolutely ridiculous. She should join Biden as he exits stage left.”

Several sources said Biden’s team largely understood the need for secrecy to guard against leaks before he dropped out .

One source close to the White House told The Post that there’s “a lot of relief that it’s over.

“There’s a lot of frustration at the senior staff who put him in this situation [and] enabled him to not have a dignified exit [from the campaign] nine months ago,” the source said.