Nancy Pelosi on Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Religion, and Jan 6

L
ATE ON AUG. 19 — far later than anyone over the age of 80 had any business being awake — Nancy Pelosi stood on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in full view of the stage and TV cameras, gripping a “We ❤ Joe” sign, eyes brimming with tears. To Joe Biden loyalists still bitter over Pelosi’s role in helping usher the president toward retirement, the theatrical cameo may have stung. But Pelosi has never worried too much about what people think — she cares more about winning. And there’s no one she’s ever wanted to defeat more than Donald Trump this November.

Pelosi’s first DNC, also in Chicago, was when she was 12, toting a stuffed donkey named Adlai, alongside her father, the mayor of Baltimore. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, the speaker emerita, now 84, returned to the city for what may be the last she’ll attend as an elected official. “Conventions always have their own personality — largely springing from who the candidate is, what the prospects are for success, and who the opponent is,” says Pelosi, who just released her memoir The Art of Power. In that sense, there are few people who had more of an influence on this convention’s particularly ecstatic aura than Pelosi herself — a fact that was not lost on the attendees.

Pelosi and I spoke twice — first, at her hotel in Chicago, just hours before Kamala Harris took the stage, and then a week after the convention — about her storied career and what comes next.

Have you seen the pins that people are wearing this week of styling you as Don Corleone — “The Godmother”?
I don’t like somebody using my face for some purpose that they’ve never even talked to me about. I think they’re dark. And “Godmother”? I don’t get that. I don’t get that at all. I don’t like them at all. We made my displeasure known to the people passing them out. They have a hell of a nerve. I mean, really?

One of the parties this week was called “Hotties for Harris.” It was a lot of young people, TikTok influencers, and they had this “Hall of Hotties” on the wall, and at the very center, the biggest painting is of you.
[Chuckles.] Old-lady hottie.

There is this sense that you have an almost folk-hero status in some circles. What does that feel like?
People have been very nice. Young people will do their own, shall we say, representation of one thing or another. I didn’t even know about that [party], but people have been nice. Here’s my thing: Take all of that energy and just put it into the election. We have to win this election. My whole goal is that [Trump] should never step into the Oval Office again. He’s anti- everything we care about. He takes great pride in overturning Roe v. Wade. It’s terrible.

But that’s nice. People have been just overwhelming in their appreciation, but I say: “[Joe Biden] made the decision. Thank him.” Now, to make it all worth it, we must win.

I saw you on the floor during President Biden’s speech on Monday. Have you had a chance to talk to him yet?
No.

I’m a virtuoso legislator. I know the issues, I’ve been in congress awhile.

Do you know what you’ll say, when you do speak again?
We’ll see when that is, and what that is, but he knows that I’ve had more than four decades of admiration for him. We share our Catholic faith. We have shared values. He knows that what we have to do now is to preserve his legacy, and if that other guy ever won, he’s going to repeal Obamacare. Roe v. Wade is already done. He wants to overturn what we’ve done to lower the cost of prescription drugs, to save the planet. He sits down with fossil-fuel executives and says, “Give me a billion dollars, and I’ll take care of all this stuff.” This is bigger than any of us: It’s about the future of our country, of our planet, and nobody knows that better than Joe Biden. And you’d have to ask him, but selflessly, he made the decision that we have to win this election in order to do that, so that Trump loses and we win the House, and the Senate, and the state legislative races as well.

We were just discussing people co-opting your image. And there was this point in your career when there was an incredible effort by the Republicans to caricature you in a negative light. You were being used in every attack ad in every race across the country. What was that like for you?
Political disagreement is part of a democracy, and people have a right to disagree in political dialogue and, especially during campaigns, debate on the issues, but what they did was, really, the politics of personal destruction — and it landed right on my husband’s head. In our home. Almost two years ago, in October.

But disagreement is … that’s the vitality of our system. I almost welcome it, so that we can have our competition, our negotiations, our successes, hopefully. But what they were doing? They knew what they were doing, and they did it because I was effective: I was an effective legislator, I was an effective public person, I was an effective fundraiser and the rest. They had to take me down, but they didn’t have to have me be from hell, cloven feet, horns on my head, evil devil like that. They knew what their market was there, and they knew they had to be drastic, because we were effectively passing bills. But that was a path right to my home.

How is your husband doing after he was attacked in 2022 by a hammer-wielding conspiracy theorist?
He’s coming along. He’s not here [in Chicago], but he’s coming along. He’s so lovely, so gracious. He’s not really that political at all, for them to go after him [is] so sad. And the guilt that I have for them going after me with him, probably, paying the price? That was too much. And then after it happened, they made a joke of it. They thought it was funny. They put it on their websites, or whatever it is they have. They made jokes. The [former] president, his family, the governor of Virginia, what’s that jerk — Musk? What’s his first name? [Pelosi staffer: “Elon.”] Elon Musk. I mean, really. Who would say such a thing? When that person took a shot at the [former] president, we were all appalled. We prayed for him to make sure he was OK.

At the time, Jan. 6 felt like a bright line for people across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike, as behavior that was universally condemned and recognized as beyond the pale. But then, after some time, it became politically polarized. How did that happen, from your perspective?

I would just differ with your most second to last sentence: People did not decide that it wasn’t what it was. They decided to say that it wasn’t what it was, but they knew what it was: a president of the United States incited an insurrection in the Capitol. They said so that night. They said so the next day. But they made a political decision: as long as Trump was going to be their nominee for president, they had to give him a bath because he was covered in the slime that is his anti-patriotism. They decided to revisit history and try to change what happened that day. The House Republicans were ridiculous. Shame on them. They didn’t even vote to support the Electoral College that night. Do you know we had caca on the floor of the House by their simple tourist viewing of the Capitol, pooing on the floor, insulting the workers in the Capitol, coming after me to put a bullet in my “f-ing head,” to use their expression, having a noose for the vice president? That was an indictment of their party to such an extent that their president would not send the National Guard, and he lies about it constantly. But he always lies, so what’s new? For them, there’s no way to cover this up, they just have to deny it. Shame on them.

Do you see Donald Trump and his brand of politics as an anomaly or as kind of an inevitable outcome of the path the Republican Party has taken since Newt Gingrich?
I would hope it would be an anomaly. I think that the party has been a great party — the Grand Old Party. Great leaders I’ve respected: the Bushes, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, those people and so many more, who have been such great leaders for our country and done so much for our country. And then they turn themselves into a cult — a cult to a thug.

The [Democratic] Party needs the Republican Party to be itself. It has a legitimate place, obviously, in the spectrum of opinion on the role of government. It’s been that way since the beginning of our country. Newt Gingrich started to poison the well with his endless money that he had from these very rich people who don’t want to pay taxes.

What some of the Republicans tell me is: “We can’t beat [MAGA Republicans] in the primary. You have to beat them in the general election.” [If we do that] then we can come back to our traditional, heated but nonetheless respectful competition. And that’s what we’ll do in November: defeat them.

I ran this time to make sure Trump never steps foot in the White House again.

How did you decide to step away from the speakership? How did you know that you were done?
You have to understand, for 20 years [in leadership] I had been: policy, politics, fundraising, and the rest. I took a big responsibility for the country, but also for my state of California. And it just was time. It was joyful. That’s why I hope the president comes to this place. I had confidence in the new people coming up. My decision was not “to do it or not do it” — I was definitely doing it. But I still wanted to stay to be able to fight Donald Trump, because when you’re in office, you have more power, more, shall we say, leverage in the public debate on this. They care more about what a member of Congress with a vote has than somebody who used to be there. I didn’t regret it.

What did you make of Vice President Harris’ political operation, and how she was able to consolidate support so quickly?
I know her well — and for a long time. I know her personally as a person of deep faith, and that has been reflected in her community service and caring. I know her officially as a very strong policy [person], strategic, and eloquent spokesperson for it all, as we’ve seen in many instances. And politically very astute, to get to your question. She ran races at the local level, the state level, two races that were very hard for her to win, but she navigated, and she won. Then the Senate, which was challenging, and then vice president. So it was no surprise to me that, with dignity and grace, she wrapped it up because she was always strategic. And then choosing Tim Walz [as her vice presidential nominee] is just a stroke of political genius. He was in the House for 12 years, he is a beautiful, lovely man.

How was he to work with in the House?
He brought Democrats, Republicans, and independents together to win a seat that we could not win for a long time. He won, and he came courageously and voted for the Affordable Care Act immediately. Very red district. And then he went home and won. Fought them on their lies and misrepresentations, and then came back and became a leader in the House on veterans issues.

Republicans are really going after him, attacking his record—
That’s what they do. I don’t hear any of them talking about what he did as the top Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee. He accomplished more things than were done for our veterans since World War II, so I can’t wait to get involved in that conversation, because I saw up close what he did working with the appropriators, because it took money.

You are known for recognizing opportunities for political leverage. How do you think the U.S. should be using its leverage with Israel to end the war in Gaza right now?
To enlarge the issue for a moment, I think that war is such outside-the-circle-of-civilized-behavior in terms of resolving conflict. Many of us, for years, have been supporters of the two-state solution. The behavior, the attitude of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is just something that … has to be more reflective of the values that we all share, as we support the state of Israel. The president has for a long time been supporting humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians since before [Oct. 7]. When we were trying to get assistance for the Palestinians in Gaza or in Jordan, the Republicans said we’ll do humanitarian aid as long as it doesn’t go to the Palestinians. That was before. That was when we were working toward our Sept. 30 end-of-the-budget deadline.

People have to understand that’s where [the Republicans] have been. It took us a long time [but we eventually got that aid] — and that was at the insistence of the president. For the people to be out there demonstrating against Joe Biden … what do they think that Donald Trump brings to the Palestinian people? He’s said he’s going to wipe it out right away. I think there has to be more of a conversation within our country allaying the fears of the Jewish community, because Hamas is a terrorist organization. The hostages must be free, and there has to be an opening in Israel for a two-state solution, so that the Palestinian people can have their own self-determination, and our relationship has for a long time reflected that priority. I’m hoping any minute — in fact, I got a call from the White House this morning, and I thought: Maybe this is the call — but it wasn’t — that would say Hamas had accepted the cease-fire agreement.

You believe a cease-fire deal is that close?
That is my understanding, and my hope. But we don’t know what Hamas will do. But as long as they can hold Netanyahu to it, then the ball is in the court, and that will go a long way: a cease-fire. The civilian collateral damage is an immorality.

Do you think that AIPAC’s intervention in some Democratic primaries this cycle could have a chilling effect on members of Congress who want to speak out about what is happening in Gaza? 

No, I don’t think so. I think that the people who lost, they voted against the infrastructure bill. This is a very big, important bill. They wanted to stop me, but I went and got Republican votes so I could pass it. I was not going to accept something from a small number of members of our caucus, that they weren’t voting for it and therefore we wouldn’t have the infrastructure bill. That was not the right vote [for them], policy-wise, [or] politically. That’s what was used against them. Their races might have been salvaged by that [vote].

I don’t like big, big money coming into a race and disrupting the dynamic. I really don’t. And I think people are going to have to be able to speak what they believe without having millions and millions of dollars come in against them. But what is the argument against the infrastructure bill? ‘Oh, I think it could have been better’? ‘Oh, I wanted other stuff to happen’? It was never going to happen with our United States Senate. So what was strategic about that? Really? This is about jobs. This is about infrastructure. It was really a step forward. There’s so much in there, and it was some about [environmental] justice. It was about equity, and they were voting against it? I think that was more of a problem for them than any of the outside money.

What is your earliest political memory?
I’ll tell you about my first convention: I was a little girl. I went with my parents. My father was mayor of Baltimore. We went with the whole Maryland delegation. My father didn’t fly, so we went by train. It was ’52, it was here [in Chicago]. They got me this stuffed animal, and they said: Whoever the nominee is, we’ll name the stuffed animal for the nominee. It’s ancient history to anybody alive today in terms of politics, but it was Estes Kefauver, Averell Harriman, Adlai Stevenson, those kinds of names. Being raised in Little Italy in Baltimore, we didn’t have anybody in the neighborhood with names like that. The donkey ended up being named Adlai.

The power center of our home was my mother — for the home, but also for politics.

Who was the power center in your household growing up, your mom or your dad?
The power center of our home was my mother — for the home, but also for politics. She loved the volunteers. She entertained the women — in those days, volunteers were largely women, as they are today — the idea of respecting the volunteers, growing the troops, and making it fun for them. My whole thing about outside mobilization springs from that. The politics I grew up in, it was from the people. It was none of this “This is what we’re going to do, and we’ll tell everybody.” No, it was “How do we build consensus from the people, the people in the grassroots, the people in the community — very different aspects of the community?” So it was a joyous, pleasant experience, because you know that when you act, you will have consensus.

What do you think being a mother yourself taught you about political power?
I tell moms who want to be involved in politics this: Place a high value on your experience as a mother, because there’s no more multitasking job in the world. You’re a diplomat resolving conflict, you’re a chef, you’re a chauffeur, you’re a manager of time — and time is the most finite entity. Management, and diplomacy, and respecting different views is more what I learned as a mom that might be transferable to politics. I say to people, “If you’re taking inventory of yourself to run for office,” sometimes they want to say, “Well, I’m just a mom.” I say, “That’s not what you say. You give yourself a gold star, because that’s a big accomplishment.”

How do you think gender stereotypes — stereotypes about being a woman, about being a mother, about being a housewife — impact the way you were perceived over the course of your career?
The funny thing is, because I came out of a world of organizing and mobilizing at the grassroots level, I didn’t really have early on any disadvantage being a woman, because we were [the ones] doing the work. But later, some men had a hard time getting used to the idea that women would be competitive for certain positions. When I ran for Congress, people would say to me, “Who’s taking care of your children?” And I said, “Four of our children are in college, one is at home, and they are taking care of us.” They just assumed that if you have children and you’re running for office, you’re not taking care of them.

You and President Biden were able to push through some historic legislation — the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act — with a very slim majority. In the early years of the Trump administration, they had five times the margin in the House, and were only able to pass a tax cut for the wealthy. What do you understand about the House that your counterparts — people like Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson — don’t?
I’m a virtuoso legislator. I know the issues, I’ve been in Congress a while. I can’t answer for their failure or their lack of consensus on their side — that’s something you have to talk to them about — I know that on our side, we had a shared vision, shared values, we worked together for what the priorities would be, and built that consensus. That didn’t mean that every time we would have unanimity, but we would always have enough consensus to pass the legislation. And I always use my time very well. Time is very important. One time, the Republicans brought their bill to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they said, “We’re going to bring this to the floor the same day that the Affordable Care Act passed.” And I said to my colleagues, “They’re going to lose.” You don’t bring the bill to the floor on the day I had the votes — you wait until you have the votes. Of course, they had to pull the bill.

The College of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the Affordable Care Act was very intense. You’re a devout Catholic. How did you negotiate those periods of your career when your politics have put you at odds with certain segments of the church?
I never considered the bishops an obstacle because the people of faith who were concerned about what the policy was in the bill were mostly supporting the bill. They knew what the bishops were saying wasn’t true, but because they were saying it, we needed more clarity, which President Obama was excellent in providing — an executive statement and then some letters [affirming that the ACA would not provide funding for abortion]. I respect the opinion they have about abortion, that’s their position. But it wasn’t in the bill, and I was not going to let them inject the misrepresentation about it into the bill. Fortunately, we had the nuns, and they were glorious, the Association of Catholic Hospitals was with us, and not all the bishops were against us — but they were pretty unified in being willing to take down the Affordable Care Act because of what they were trying to do with a woman’s right to choose, which was to undo Roe v. Wade. They had a different agenda, and it was shameful, in my view, because this was the Gospel of Matthew about caring for people, and it was always part of the Catholic agenda that we would care for people. They were working with the Republicans in a way that was heartbreaking in some respects, but my faith is between God and me and not necessarily them.

There is this conflict playing out in American politics between a more humanist version of Catholicism that I think you and Joe Biden both kind of represent, and a more hard-line arch-conservative strain that people like Leonard Leo and Samuel Alito subscribe to.
Every time we’ve had a pope, I have respected what the pope has said. We have a disagreement over a woman’s right to choose, but the pope is the pope, and so I respect how others follow his lead. Pope Francis has been a pope of great Catholicism and humanity, so I feel very comfortable with where the church is.

I never like to mix politics and religion, but I see some of that happening on the other side. It’s very sad. But they believe what they believe, and they put a billion dollars into [Leo’s network] to affect elections, which is most unfortunate.

How do Democrats counter the sheer scale of a slush fund like the kind Leo is overseeing?
One of the things we’re trying to do — and it’s what’s unfinished business from before, because we didn’t have 60 votes in the Senate — is pass the For the People Act and the Voting Rights Act together. John Lewis wrote the first 300 pages of the For the People Act. And, of course, the Voting Rights Act is named for him. We can’t get the Republicans to do any of it, but it’s what we have to do. Part of the For the People Act is to have the DISCLOSE Act, so the public can see how much money these people are putting into campaigns. It’s horrible, and it takes away the confidence everyday people have about the power of their voice. They have to know their voice, their vote, is as powerful as anyone’s.

You mention that the reason the DISCLOSE Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act haven’t passed — and you could add the bill to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade — is because of this 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Do you see a long-term solution to the structural inequalities the Democratic Party is facing — with representation in the Senate and the Electoral College? And do you think the filibuster should be reformed?
We all take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution was drafted by our visionary founders, and it says two votes per state. That’s in the Constitution. I don’t know that they could have ever foreseen that California would have 40 million people and have two senators, and Wyoming would have fewer than I have in my district and have two senators. But that’s in the Constitution, and we take an oath to protect and defend it. The fact that there is a 60-vote requirement is, in my view, undemocratic. I don’t mean with a capital D. I mean a small D. That you have to have 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor? That’s just not right. So when we win — and we must win — the House, the Senate, and, of course, the White House, we will need to have public pressure brought to get rid of the filibuster rule. I don’t know why they haven’t done it before. If we could, just think: Right away, we could pass Roe v. Wade, background checks on guns, the Equality Act for fairness to the LGBTQ community — so important. We could pass an immigration bill. We could pass, first and foremost, our voting rights and For the People Act. Think of all the things we could do if we didn’t have a 60-vote requirement. And that is not in the Constitution.

We have to win the Senate. They told me that if they win, they will change the Senate in terms of filibuster, and we would pass For The People Act, which makes all the difference in the world in terms of our democracy.

When you say “they,” is that Leader Schumer? 

Leader Schumer, yes.

Do you think it would change the relationship between the House and the Senate if there wasn’t that filibuster, that 60-vote threshold?
The thing is, we consider ourselves a bandwagon in the House. You have to do what you have to do to get the votes to be as much of a compromise as possible to make the biggest difference in the lives of the American people. We consider [the Senate] a convoy going as slow as the slowest ship. I talked about the 60 votes, but in some instances, 99 senators are not enough. You saw one senator recently could hold up hundreds of Department of Defense appointees because he felt like it, and they let him get away with it for a while.

You were talking just now about all of the possibilities Democrats would have if the filibuster went away, and you mentioned the Equality Act. It strikes me that one of the biggest changes that has occurred in America since you arrived in Congress is a real sea change for the gay community in terms of rights, and the broad acceptance that community now enjoys. Can you talk about that?
I started our conversation by talking about outside mobilization, and that was very, very important to the successes and changes that we had legislatively and culturally. The first day I went to Congress, they said, “When you get sworn in, don’t say a word. Nobody wants to hear from a new member of Congress. OK? Just: ‘Yes, I’ll uphold the Constitution.’”

But then I was sworn in and the speaker said, “Does the gentlewoman from California wish to address the House?” So then I’m starting to go up there, and these same people are saying, “Be short!” So I got up and, very briefly, I thank my parents who were there, my constituents, who sent me there, and then I said, “And this is very brief: I told my constituents when I came here, I would say that [the late Congresswoman] Sala [Burton] sent me, and I’m here to fight against HIV and AIDS.” I go to sit down, and they’re all in a fluster, these members. Oh, my God. I said, “What? That was short! How much shorter could I have been?” They said, “Why would you want the first thing anybody knows about you here to be that you’re here for AIDS?”

I was prepared to come to fight for policy, for the community, for care, treatment, research. I was not prepared for discrimination. What I learned that day was that the challenge was going to be not competition for funds, but eliminating some of the discrimination that people have.

You’re running for your 20th term in Congress this November. What work is left unfinished?
I ran this time to be in the campaign in a substantial way, to make sure Donald Trump never steps foot in the White House again. This is a mission.

People said, “Well, he won in ’16 …” I said, “Well, people didn’t know, but now we know.” We know that he is in defiance of the oath of office and wants to terminate the Constitution. That is my mission, and central to it is the protection of our electoral process, by making sure we have a Democratic Congress because, quite frankly, we had to have a Democratic House on Jan. 6, on that awful day. I was speaker, and I knew what we had to do that day, but any Democratic speaker would have been fine. But we have to have Hakeem [Jeffries] as speaker on Jan. 6 of this coming year. That’s essential.

Can you tell me about your relationship with Hakeem Jeffries? I understand that you were involved in elevating him as your successor.
No, he was elevated by the members. He has a great deal of respect in our caucus from the members. He’s really a wonderful legislator, which is part of the job. He’s a great leader, which is the job, and he’s going to be a wonderful speaker of the House. For me, having been 20 years leader or speaker, the best thing I want for the caucus, the Congress, and the country is for him to do even more than I did. I had a fabulous record, and you want the foundation that you built, the legacy that you left, to lead to something bigger. And he’s capable of that.