The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Pelosi by Molly Ball Interview

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Pelosi by Molly Ball Interview Time.com/author/molly-ball NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An intimate, fresh perspective on the most powerful woman in American political history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by award-winning political journalist Molly Ball She’s the iconic leader who puts Donald Trump in his place, the woman with the toughness to take on a lawless president and defend American democracy. Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It’s a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party―even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal access to health care to saving the US economy from collapse, from reforming Wall Street to allowing gay people to serve openly in the military. How did an Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ? Ball’s nuanced, page-turning portrait takes readers inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment. Molly Ball was a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she was a leading voice in the magazine’s coverage of U.S. politics, and a CNN political analyst. Ball has been awarded the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, and the Lee Walczak Award for Political Analysis for her coverage of political campaigns and issues. Ball previously reported for Politico, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the Las Vegas Sun. She has worked for newspapers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post. She is a graduate of Yale University and was a 2009 recipient of the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 2007, she won $100,000 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Ball grew up in Idaho and Colorado. She lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Oh, my gosh. We have the most wonderful guest today. But we always have the most wonderful guests today, but we always have the one most wonderful guest, and that's why you should refer the show to all your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, you know, just play the show. Just, you know, just play it 24-7, just like you would anything else. Go to dcvpn.com, chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. You can also see the live version of this on video. It's the newest

technology on 2020, uh, youtube.com for just Chris Voss, you know, that bell notification button and subscribe. There you go. Uh, you can also see us now on Goodreads. We have a new book club. We're launching on goodreads.com. Just find me under Chris Voss. And we are now listed with one of our newest syndicates under Amazon Music. So that's there. Today, we have a most brilliant, super award-winning author on. And she's a writer, journalist, et cetera, et cetera. And we're going to be talking about her book that she has put out. This is a book that you can pick up off of Amazon.com, simply titled Pelosi.

Molly Ball is with us today and Molly is Time Magazine's national political correspondent and political analyst for CNN. She appears regularly on PBS Washington Week, CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's This Week, and other television and radio programs. Ball is the winner of numerous awards for coverage of American politics, including the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize and the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. She grew up in Idaho and Colorado and lives in Washington, D.C. area with her husband and three children. And fun fact, in 2007, she won $100,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

So there's that, too. Welcome to the show, Molly. How are you? Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm doing all right. How are you doing? Good, good, good.

I thought that was a fun fact. Everybody likes that line in the bio. That's why I stick it in there. It's always a good conversation piece. That's awesome. So give us your plugs so people can look you up on the interwebs, find out more about you and the book. Well, you can find my writing for my day job at time.com or in Time Magazine,

to which everyone should subscribe. It is very affordable, and you're supporting the magazine industry, which can use the help. And as you said, you can find me all over television radio i'm on twitter at molly esk m-o-l-l-y-e-s-k-u-e there you go there you go so check it out the book is pelosi and you can find it on uh stands near you and uh tell us about this woman that we may have never heard of named pelosi what motivated you write the book everyone knows knows who Mrs. Pelosi is. Yeah, we decided that a subtitle or further explanation beyond the name wasn't really necessary. It's pretty instantly recognizable, especially these days to anyone

who follows politics. Well, the story of the book is that in late 2017, I took this job at Time Magazine. I'd previously been a writer for The Atlantic. And one of my first assignments was a cover profile of Nancy Pelosi. She'd actually never been on the cover of Time Magazine before. In fact, she'd never been on the cover of any American news magazine, including Newsweek, US News, back when those were more vibrant competition to Time than they are today. And she was a little bit bitter about this. She would occasionally drop little hints like, oh, isn't it curious that, you know, all these men have been on the cover, but I haven't. You

know, she was the first woman Speaker of the House in history back in 2007. And yet 10 years later, had never been on the cover. And we felt like it was a good time to profile her. If you remember in 2017, she was still the minority leader of the House at that time, leader of the House Democrats. But we were going into that 2018 midterm campaign year, and she was really at the center of the action. She was, you know, the Republicans had flat out said that she basically constituted their entire campaign strategy. They were going to run the 2018 midterms. They were going, they thought they were going to win the 2018 midterms by, you know, putting her face in every ad against every, you know, Democratic candidate all across the country

to make the case that they're all extreme San Francisco liberals. And for the Democrats too, right? She was the source of a lot of their fundraising and strategy, right? She was the source of a lot of their fundraising and strategy, but she was also the source of a lot of angst. There were a lot of Democrats who felt like it was time for her to go, that she'd been around too long and that, and that, you know, it wasn't fun having all of a hundred million dollars in Republican attack ads with Nancy Pelosi in them and everything, a single district, a lot of Democrats thought maybe it was it was time for her to, to stop being sort of a burden to them in that way. So I got this assignment, I frankly, I wasn't all that interested in Nancy Pelosi.

She's, you know, the kind of people that you love to write about as a political reporter are the ones with the big personalities, right? The great orators, the inspirational figures, the ones who are always telling funny stories about themselves and dropping amusing quips, you know, the Stacey Abrams or Lindsey Grahams of the world. And she's really not that. She's not a big colorful personality. She's kind of the opposite. Her skills are a little bit more behind the scenes. But I went to interview her for the first time in January 2018. We met in Baltimore's Little Italy where she grew up. And even though it was January in Baltimore, it was 20 degrees outside, she had chocolate ice cream for breakfast at the little Italian pastry shop where we met. And she proceeded to tell me about, you know, her roots and her upbringing and her life and so on. And we proceeded to have several more interviews in DC, in Houston, in San Francisco.

And so as I got to know her and study her career, I really realized what a remarkable historical figure that she is. And it also struck me that, you know, it was ironic that she was under so much pressure, even from her own party. In 2018, a year when, you know, the sort of backdrop politically was this unprecedented uprising of American women, this surge of women's political activism that really had never been seen before in American politics. So here she is, you know, this historic figure for women, this barrier-breaking figure, and all anybody can talk about is how, you know, she needs to get out of the way. So I wrote that piece in September. It was published in September 2018 on the cover,

and then the Democrats won the midterms. And there was this fascinating phenomenon where everybody's opinion of Nancy Pelosi just sort of flipped 180 degrees, right? All of these Democrats who've been saying, oh, you know, we're tired of her. She's a burden for us. All of a sudden, it was like they looked around and went, oh, wait, maybe she is actually good at her job. Maybe we should keep her in this position. And, you know, as someone who's been writing about American politics and particularly women in politics for a long time, that question of how she's perceived and why was really interesting to me.

And so I felt like there was more of a story to tell and there was new interest in her as a figure of significance. And so I set out to write my first book and here we are. The cover on your book, the picture of the iconic red coat, tell us a little bit about that and where it came from. Yeah. So I mentioned, you know, this reversal that happened in her public image. And this image really crystallized all of that. This was, if people have forgotten, it was a meeting that Nancy Pelosi and her counterpart, the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, they went to the White House to negotiate with the president.

And instead of having a closed door negotiation, like they expected, Trump invited the cameras to stay as he does sometimes, I think he thinks it, you know, keeps people on their toes or whatever. And in the course of that meeting, where, you know, Pelosi and Schumer were trying to tell Trump that he should not shut down the government in order to get funding for his border wall, that it wasn't going to work. And he was sort of insulting her based on the struggle that she was having to regain the Speaker's gavel. And so when he said, you know, Nancy's having a tough time right now, she stopped him, she interrupted him. And she said, Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this

meeting as the leader of the House Democrats who just want a big victory. And then after the meeting at which Trump, you know, proudly took ownership of a potential shutdown, much to the Democrats' glee, she and Schumer walked out of the White House and she put on that red coat and she put on these round tortoiseshell sunglasses and had this little sort of self-satisfied smirk on her face. And that picture of her combined with what she had just done, right, combined with the way she had she had interrupted Trump and put him in his place. You know, so many Democrats, so many liberals were just so hungry to see someone stand up to Trump, to his face. And there had been so little of that since 2016. It was extremely gratifying for people. And then especially for a lot of women who had been in that

position, right, who've been in meetings when a man has talked over them or tried to tell them where they stand. And the fact that she stood up for herself, refused to be insulted, and told the president again to his face exactly what she thought of him. I think that also was just extremely cathartic for people. And then just how cool she looked in that image, right? It really symbolized this, you know, this extremely sort of chic, put together, self-possessed, confident woman who's strong, who's tough, who's able to stand up to Donald Trump. And so it was sort of the image that launched a thousand memes. And there were all of these, all these tweets about

it and the coat and so on. And in fact, it was such a viral image that the coat had to be reissued. It was a Max Mara coat from like a decade before that wasn't currently for sale, but so many people wanted it. And one little thing about that coat, actually, Nancy Pelosi has obviously a good sense of style, but she hates to shop and she doesn't put a huge amount of thought

into her outfits. That coat was actually something and she doesn't put a huge amount of thought into her outfits. That coat was actually something that she'd had for a long time. She wore it in 2013 to President Obama's second inauguration. And so after that image became this incredibly recognizable meme, she, instead of being, you know, gratified or excited that people were into this image of her, you know, one of the excited that people were into this image of her, you know, one of the main themes of the book is how little she cares about sort of what, how people perceive her. And so her reaction to that image was mostly, oh, darn it. Now I can't wear that coat anymore because people are going to think that I'm making a statement if I put it on.

Oh, it became a meme. So that meeting was really iconic. The, the, you know, they're going into the whole meeting. He's talking mostly to Schumer, and they're having a whole – she's being largely ignored and being dismissed. And they literally – it almost seemed like – I don't know if they did it on purpose, but it almost seemed like they baited him and Trump into admitting that he was like, oh, I'm all for the shutdown.

Screw it. And when she came out and she's got that CSI moment, I forget the redheaded names, actors of CSI where he shoves on the glasses. And it's just that cool that goes out. It's just so awesome. You know, one of the things that interests me about Pelosi is it seems like for a long time I saw people attacking Obama because they saw a black man in position of power over them. And I think that's another reason why. And to me, that's racist. And for Pelosi, I think there's the sexist part of it where a lot of the GOP loves to attack her.

People love to attack her. And I mostly hear it from men you know gives you the sexist symbol um but it seems like she's the one they like to attack uh in a way that that basically is has a sexist core at its base they they really resent her being a woman of power and everything else do i am i correct in that assumption well look you know you when she obviously is is a tremendously polarizing figure. She is somebody that a lot of people, especially on the right, but really a lot of people of all political persuasions just seem to have this visceral reaction to her for whatever reason. You know,

the Republicans attack her because they think it works. They think it's effective. They see how, you know, members of their base react to the image of her, the idea of her. And it's very powerful and motivates people to vote against, you know, whoever their local Democrat is. So they keep doing it. And, you know, there's nothing unfair about this. The Democrats in the 90s campaigned against Speaker Gingrich or the Republicans even longer ago, campaigned against Tip O'Neill. Politics ain't beanbag. But no congressional leader has ever been subjected to just the amount of attacks and the sheer level of dehumanization that Nancy Pelosi has. And when you ask her about it, you know, you would think that this would

hurt her feelings a little bit. But her response is always, if I weren't effective, I wouldn't be a target. I think she really believes that. And I think there is some truth to it, frankly. I think if she had as many problems, you know, running the House of Representatives and keeping her caucus together as, you know, a John Boehner or a Paul Ryan did, I don't think that she would be as, as, as feared a figure on the right, because, you know, Obamacare probably wouldn't have gotten done a lot of the accomplishments of the Obama era might not have gotten done without, without her being there running the house. And so, you know, in the, in the policies that she has, that she's managed to get done, she is a threat to

the Republicans' agenda. And so it really, to me, is very revealing about her mindset that she just blocks all that out. She really has this incredible ability to just sort of ignore the haters and keep going. She's always invoked as the epitome of the quote unquote San Francisco liberal. And of course, she quite literally is a liberal who lives in San Francisco. It's interesting to me that the provenance of that phrase had actually emerged in wide circulation in 1984 when the Democrats held their national convention in San Francisco. And a big part of the reason for that convention being held there was Nancy Pelosi. At the time,

she was the chair of the California democratic party and she was a big part of bringing that convention to San Francisco. But she believes that that, that phrase San Francisco liberal, it really is just a homophobic dog whistle. She believes that when people when people invoke that phrase or when people hear that phrase, what they're saying is this person stands up for gay rights and that is what we're opposed to. I just learned something new. I had no idea that was a dog whistle for that for all the years. I just thought, you know. Well, at least in her opinion. I think the Republicans would say it's

a proxy for a lot of different policies, right? But yeah, I never thought of that angle. Jeez, wow. It's just insidious. So this is a New York Times bestseller. My understanding is this the first autobiography or biography of Pelosi? There have actually been a couple of other biographies that were written during her first speakership. So about a decade ago. So, and this is the first biography that she has cooperated with. She gave me a series of interviews for, but it's not an authorized biography in the sense that, you know, I didn't, I didn't consult with her in the writing of it. It's all, it's all my take. It's all my, my ideas. So you tell the story in the book about her upbringing, her parents

who were politically motivated. Give us an idea of how her life started out and where she came from. Yeah, one of the things that I find so interesting about Nancy Pelosi is that everybody seems to have an opinion about her, but very few people actually know very much about her story and where she came from. And part of it is, as I alluded to before, she isn't someone who tells her own story at the drop of a hat. She's not, I don't think, a natural storyteller. But she grew up in a political family. Her own story at the drop of a hat. And she's, she's not, I don't think a natural storyteller. But she grew up in a political family. Her father at the time she was born was a Congressman from Baltimore,

a pro new deal Democrat ally of FDR. By the time she was seven, her father had been elected mayor. And so he was very much a sort of old school political boss. The first Italian mayor of Baltimore. In fact, her parents both descended from Italian immigrants. And so she was very much shaped by this combination of, you know, being born into the Catholic Church, the Democratic Party. She always says the sort of three pillars of her upbringing were patriotism, faith, and politics, the Democratic Party. So those loyalties were forged very early. But, you know, I focused a lot in the early part of the book on her mother,

in part because, you know, her father having been a politician and her having become a politician, it's always sort of, her upbringing is always sort of written about through that lens but from the first time that I interviewed Nancy Pelosi she really went out of her way to highlight her mother's influence and her mother's contributions I think because her mother wasn't the one on the ballot she didn't get that kind of recognition that Nancy Pelosi feels that she

deserved but she talks very frankly about the ways that her mother was stifled, about the ways that, you know, her mother wasn't able to do the things she wanted to do. She wanted to be an auctioneer. She wanted to go to law school. She wanted to start her own business. She actually patented a beauty product. But in those days, you know, you needed a man's signature on the checks to make investments or do other things in business. And her husband would not give that to her. So I think Nancy Pelosi was very shaped by having, you know, her mother was a very strong, very formidable woman. She very much ran her husband's political operation, as so many political spouses do. She was tough. She once supposedly

punched a poll worker in the face and told off both LBJ and Ronald Reagan to their faces in their time. So you can see a lot of the character and personality of Nancy Pelosi and her mother, but she was also very much shaped by the things her mother didn't get to do. And by wanting, wanting that independence, that control over her own life that her mother never got just because she was a woman. That's an amazing story. The, uh, and then, and then she had her own family and she had, uh, I believe five children. That's right. She graduated from college, married her college, sweetheart, moved with him to New York city and then San Francisco and had five children in six years. So, so I also write a lot in the book about how she was shaped by by motherhood. I think that's another thing that skills that you take away from that. And she

talks about it a lot, too, that feeling when you have little kids, especially that feeling that your capacities have been expanded, that you have these reserves of energy that you didn't know you had. And then when you have multiple kids, the way that you're always sort of, they're always sort of playing off of each other, right? You are very much the leader of this sort of team of rivals. It's really a coalition building exercise. And I think a lot of the things that she does so well in running the House Democratic Caucus are drawn from those skills that she learned when she was a young mom. And she has a ton of grandkids. I forget the number. Nine.

Nine grandkids. So yeah, she's used to hurting a lot of different people has a ton of grandkids. I forget the number. Nine. Nine grandkids. So yeah, she's used to hurting a lot of different people, a lot of different things. And what's funny is all these iconic moments, and you're right, early on, they were trying to keep her from taking the speaker of the house a second time. And they're like, oh, she's over the hill, and you know, all that sort of riffraff stuff. And yet yet I couldn't think from what she's done so far in dealing with Donald Trump, I couldn't think of a better person to be the antithesis or the anti-Trump. And I think especially because she's a woman, that makes it even harder for him to deal with her because it just flabbergasts him in every way shape or form and the thing i always love about pelosi is she's got

that mom finger you know that we see in the iconic photos you know you know you ever mess with the mom finger when mom says your full name you know that's the moment that you okay mom's uh we're at the line here and so uh it's really interesting to me how a lot of this has trained her for being able to run her caucus. And she does a really good job managing it. Yeah, I think it's been clear from the beginning that way that, you know, her effectiveness as a foil and an opponent to him has been a big part of this sort of late life rehabilitation of her image that we've seen. But he also clearly has a certain amount of respect for her. You know, he has even, you know, they haven't spoken since impeachment. He continues to hold a grudge against her for that. And as we know,

with this president, his personal feelings about things often come first in terms of the way he interacts with people. I think she would be totally willing to put any grudges aside and get in a room with him if she thought they could get something done together. But that's not where he's coming from. So she deals with other members of the administration now. But, you know, if there's anything that we know about Trump, it's that he respects strength. And say whatever you want about Nancy Pelosi, I think everybody, pro or con, agrees that she's very tough,

she's very strong. And so he has always had a certain amount of respect for her because she is someone who doesn't back down and who can be extraordinarily tough. You know, as you mentioned, you know, she did have to struggle to become speaker again after the Democrats won the midterms in 2018. That meeting and that image and going viral really helped her. But then when she did take that gavel, the government was shut down. Trump had followed through on his threats and shut down the government. And it was up to her and the Democrats to try to find a way to get the government open again. And she'd been clear from the beginning that she was not going to fund the border wall.

And after the shutdown had dragged on for more than a month, the longest government shutdown in history, Trump came, he completely gave in. People forget this about him, that he does sometimes give in completely. And he, you know, found a face-saving excuse to move on and talk about something else. But the fact that she was able to defeat him in that confrontation, I think, tells you a lot about that dynamic. Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, from all the iconic scenes, in fact, I was watching, I think, I can't remember where I was seeing it, but I was seeing the image again, where she's in the room with everybody and Trump, and she's standing there with a mom finger. We saw the, it was the press moment where the guy says, I can't refuse questioning if she really prays for Trump.

But it was the pray for Trump, I think, meeting. And she leaves and some reporter yells out some sort of, you know, cockeyed question. And she comes back in with the mom finger. Right. And that was just so iconic. Yeah. So that, that particular interaction, that was during impeachment when she was asked by a Sinclair reporter, whether, whether she hated the president. I think this is a legit question, right? A lot of Republicans had, had, had, had accused her and the Democrats of, of impeaching Trump on, on purely partisan basis, simply because

they couldn't stand him. But she really did not like that. And she sort of got in that reporter's face, as you said, with the finger and said, you know, don't even mess with me with that. You know, I'm Catholic and we don't hate anybody. And she does take her faith very seriously. It is very authentic. The other picture that you mentioned was from a late 2019 meeting in the White House in the Situation Room sea of men. They're all sort of looking down in a way and trying, trying to avert their eyes.

And she's the one who's standing up and pointing at Trump and saying, she later said what she said in that moment was, Mr. President all roads with you lead to Putin. And he then, you know, insulted her and she and Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer stormed out of the meeting. But, and in fact, there, there's an interview with her from several years ago, not by me, where she says that she knows that people think it's rude to point, but she just can't help it. It's just, and you see these images of her frequently over the course of

her career, where when she gets in somebody's face, she does have that finger pointed at them. But, you know, she was asked after that image about, gosh, you know, it was so striking to people that she was the only woman in this room full of men. But that was not new for her, right? She is the first, she became the first woman to lead a party in Congress back in 2003. And to this day, she is the only woman to ever have led a party in Congress to this day, you know, the only woman ever to be Speaker of the House. And so for a lot of years, she's been the only woman in the room. And part of the reason that she says she didn't retire after 2016 was that when Hillary Clinton lost the election, she realized that without her staying on as Democratic leader, there would be no woman in

the room when the president is meeting with the leaders of Congress to negotiate whatever. And that's important to her. The idea that the women being represented in the in the highest levels in the halls of power is really important to her. So, you know, who knows if that's really the reason she stayed or if it was some other combination of stubbornness and obligation. But but but she's been in that position a lot in her life, and she takes it very seriously. She really is the best person. I can't think of anybody else who could stand up to Trump, and actually a lot of more people in the GOP and everyone else should be doing what she does, and so that's why I think everyone really flushed to that moment where we saw somebody standing up to the bully on the street.

And that's how bullies are. You know, the people who stand up to a bully are the people that they usually, like you say, respect. And to see her stand up and everyone in that room is cowering, most of them are men because they know the mom finger and they know when mom gets angry. And that's why they're cowering and looking down you know you the even the generals are just like oh wow yeah okay we are in trouble here um and so and so i i think you're right i think a lot of her image she does so much behind the scenes negotiating managing you know i've read a lot about how she handles her caucus, how she opens herself up. She handles, you know, she's got a whole basket of deplorables too up there,

the Jim Jordans and the, you know, all the little monkey wrench kids that Matt Gates and stuff that are running around that I don't know that I'd have the patience she does, but she seems to be able to give them enough room to run, but everybody knows who runs the House when it comes down to it. Yeah, well, you know, she's not in charge of the Republicans, and so she is not charged with dealing with them, but the Democrats, you know, I'm not going to name any names, but there's plenty of unruly and difficult members of the Democratic caucus, too, and it really is testament to her skill that she is able to keep them all in line, that there has not been a government shutdown on her watch when she has been speaker. She has always, obviously there are a lot of conflicts within the caucus.

There are people who are unhappy at any given time. But she has kept the trains running. She's kept the government running. She has been able to get major policy accomplishments through the House at a time of historic polarization and partisan conflict. And I think that that is really testament to, you know, we talk a lot about issues in politics and people's different positions, but we don't talk as much about governing. And it really is a skill. It really is an art. You know, there are 435 members of the House of Representatives, 240 of them Democrats. And not only does she know everybody's name, but she knows the politics of their district. She knows what issues they care about,

what committees they want to be on, who their friends and rivals and enemies are within the caucus, what their priorities are in terms of what their ambitions are in their career. And that is a massive monumental task. It's a very specific skill set. So, you know, I get asked sometimes, well, what else did she want to do? Did she ever want to run for president or be in the cabinet or be governor or something else? And she really never has had any aspiration to anything

else. I think in part because she recognizes that running the House is a very specialized skill set, and that that is the thing that she's good at. And it wouldn't necessarily translate to a different type of leadership position, but it is very well suited to this extremely strange and arcane place, the House of Representatives. I think she's going to be in history for a long time. And I think she'll be the antithesis of Donald Trump. And those two will be the two that people remember in history going at it.

In your book, what stories or different things that you found maybe surprised you or will surprise readers? You know, one of the things that I found surprising, we've talked about her toughness, but just, I think a lot of people see her as sort of a cautious calculating politician, but she is really a risk taker. And she's really someone who's been willing to get in people's faces. Over the course of her career. She's not afraid to be out on a limb and take a risk, whether it was in 1991 when she went to Beijing and defied the Chinese government and evaded the handlers,

her and a couple of other members of Congress, to go into Tiananmen Square and stage a protest. And they were chased out of Tiananmen Square and stage a protest. And they were chased out of Tiananmen Square by the Chinese police and caused an international incident. You know, she was, she, when she ran for leadership after having been in the House for a decade, she was not next in line. And she, there was some grumbling among the sort of male dominated establishment of the House Democrats. But she believed that she could do it, and she ended up being right.

She was against the Iraq War from the very beginning at a time when a lot of top Democrats, including the leaders of the House Democratic Caucus, were in favor of giving George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq. And a lot of Democrats were concerned that they shouldn't oppose Bush on this because it would make them look weak and they would alienate the public. But she was the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee at that time. She had seen a lot of the classified evidence that the administration was relying on to make a case for the war. She felt strongly that the war was not warranted and would have bad effects. And she actually whipped her own colleagues against party leadership to get them to

vote against authorizing the war. And in fact, a majority of House Democrats, in large part because of her efforts, did oppose the war in Iraq. And I think in retrospect, she and they would say that they were vindicated. And all of those Democrats, including, you know, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and a lot of other top Democrats, ended up, you know, saying in retrospect that they were wrong to have supported it. So this side of her that we've seen so often recently of being willing to take risks and to get in people's faces, that is not anything new

for her. That's really been part of the way that she's wired from the beginning. There's a picture of her father in JFK. She absolutely, you know, worshipped John F. Kennedy when she was growing up. In fact, like a lot of American Catholics, right, he meant a lot to her. And I think she really modeled her ideology on his, she attended his convention and his inauguration with her family. And when she was 16 or 17, when she was in high school, then Senator Kennedy was coming to Baltimore to speak at a Democratic dinner. And her mother pretended to be sick so that she could sit at the head table and meet Senator Kennedy. So she still has that picture hanging in her office of a teenage Nancy Pelosi meeting a young JFK.

And I think growing up with that political nature, I mean, that's just your race and that environment just makes her a better political character, doesn't it? Yes. So on the one hand, yes, she obviously did grow up surrounded by politics in a family that cared about politics, you know, running her father's campaigns and her mother had the Baltimore Women's Democratic Club meeting in the basement. But you know, she had five older brothers. And if anybody was going to be a politician in the family, her parents assumed it would be the men, it would be that it was not something that she was ever sort of trained in or, or convinced that that she could do because the culture at the time was that women didn't do that.

And so I do think that, you know, this often happens, I think, almost unconsciously with successful women. There's this attempt to find the man to pin it on, this attempt to find the man who taught her everything she knows, the man behind her. You see this with AOC sometimes, right? There will be people on the right saying, oh, well, there must be some kind of Bengali or person pulling her strings. It can't possibly just be her and her ideas and her ambition that's running this whole show. So I don't want to attribute too much to her father. But I do think that, you know, you look at the Democratic Party that she came from, which is very much the Democratic Party of, you know, the early part of the of the 20th century, that that on sort of the on social liberalism. And I think critics would say sort of representing a sort of elite manner of thinking. And it really is, to me, a sort of perfect, a big urban mayor,

to a sort of coastal San Francisco liberal archetype. The other thing I love about her is she has that way, and a lot of women are good at this. She has a way of giving that little shank that is a kind of push to make you think about it. And you don't see it at first. And Trump doesn't at first, like she'll shank him with little something, you know, like the, the, I pray for him every day. And, and that just gets to him and eats at him. And she's like really good at making that, like that subtle shank, if you will. And, and then it just draws

him out and you get fired fury. And then he he looks like an idiot because you're just like, wow, dude, that really got to you. I don't know. It's always funny to see, and it's the strategic nature of the way she's able to do it and the way she can deflect him and not get pulled into his noise but still rise above it I think is a great negotiating talent of hers. She is a very good negotiator. And there are a lot of stories in my book about the negotiations that she's been a part

of, whether it's this year, the massive, you know, multi-trillion dollar packages of COVID relief that she's been an integral part of negotiating and getting through the House and getting, you know, the Republicans to agree to. Or, you know, you look back to not only Obamacare, but the TARP bailout that she teamed up with George W. Bush on, even though it was very politically unpopular. She felt that it had to be done no matter what the sort of political cost of that was, the stimulus that she helped to negotiate and get through Congress. So she has a long history of negotiating these things. But she's not always subtle, right?

I mean, she ripped up the State of the Union address. I don't think anyone would say that that was a particularly subtle jab on her part. That was pretty frontal. I would, correct me if I'm wrong. Do you think that if we survive this, not another four years Trump, cause I think we'll all be in the Gulag, but I think if we survive this, I think they're going to look back on two main characters,

her and Donald Trump and the, the boxing matches that they did. And that iconic moment tearing up the president. I mean, can you imagine ever in any president's history, the speaker of the house tearing up the president i mean can you imagine ever in any president's history the speaker of the house tearing up the president's speech yeah i do think that the conflict between the two of them has been sort of the principal uh political dynamic of the last four years uh and you know it's been it's been consequential not only as a sort of image of political conflict or as a sort of metaphor, right?

She sort of represents everything that is the opposite of him. If you think of him as sort of the epitome of chaos and she's very much about order. She's an institutionalist. He's a tearer down of institutions. That speech that she tore up came after he'd just given, you know, the State of the Union, where he was giving the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh and having the people in the audience stand up. And I think she very much felt that he was sort of defiling the chamber of the House of Representatives that he'd been invited into. And she was sort of viscerally offended on that basis. But she's also, you know, what she cares about is results. What she cares about is getting legislation through Congress that changes people's lives for the better.

And in that regard, you know, it really is due to her leadership and her being in that position that Trump has not had a great deal of legislative success throughout his presidency. She's been willing to work with him where they may have shared goals or where she believes there's a compromise to be had. She's repeatedly tried to negotiate an infrastructure bill with him. He sort of lost interest and wandered away from that, but that was something that she had some hope that they might be able to team up on. She passed the USMCA, the revision of NAFTA through the House, people forget this, the same day that she announced the impeachment articles last December, she also announced that there was a deal on this revision of NAFTA. And there were a lot of Democrats who said, well, why would you give

him that? Why would you give the president a political win and enable him to go out there and say he has this accomplishment? And for her, it's very simple. She felt like it was an improvement. She has her issues with NAFTA. She actually voted for it back in the 90s and then came to regret it, one of her few regrets that she's on record with. And so she really did think that these small tweaks to NAFTA that the USMCA represented were a better deal for workers and better deal for, for the American economy. And so she's, she wants, she wants to get things done, even if it does mean that, you know, the Republicans get a political victory, that's not as important to her. She always seems to me like we've been talking about to be a person who's more concerned about, you know, governing, doing the backdoor things,

the negotiating, all that good stuff, the work that she has to do. She doesn't seem to be a politician who's really big on, let's work on her image and do lots of image appearances. She does lots of news appearances. But I think that's really important because that's what we need. One of the sad parts I hate is I'll have people that will be like, well, no one's doing anything in Congress. And you're like, do you know that Pelosi has passed, I think it's three or 400 bills, I ran an account now, that they put before Mitch McConnell, but they can't do anything. But they have done the work. They have passed

those bills. She has shown that she has that that leadership to govern and it's sad to me that a lot of morons in the american public just don't understand that image of like wow okay so they did the work so who's really at fault and they just throw the whole congress thing in it and it is maybe that one of the issues of her image that i don't know maybe she needs a better pr agent or something i don't know well look she is not she does not put a lot of thought into how she is perceived from the very earliest days you know uh she she did not run for congress until she was 47 years old and her kids were out of the house and she'd been a long-time party activist in california democratic politics and then this dramatic uh scene that i would not believe

if I hadn't spoken to witnesses, because it sounds like something out of a movie, but literally on her deathbed, her friend, the Congresswoman, Sala Burton, called her to her side and said, Nancy, I want you to run for Congress and take my seat. And so that was why she finally did get into elective politics. And from that very first campaign, very tough campaign

in San Francisco, where she had 13 different opponents, people would come to her and say, oh my gosh, they're saying the most horrible things about you. And she'd cut them off and she'd say, I don't want to hear it. Why would you want me to have that on my mind? Why would you want me to be thinking about that? If you care about the nasty things they're saying about me, go out and do the work, go out and walk another precinct, go out and raise more money for the party or for my campaign. She is always focused on results. And so I think that's why, you know, the fact that she is an unpopular figure with the public really does not get to her, because it doesn't have anything to do with what she cares about. And what she cares about is accomplishing the goals that she's focused on. You know, one of her mentors,

Phil Burton, whose wife was Sala Burton, the congresswoman who took his seat after he died, but Phil Burton, sort of liberal legend in the House and in California Democratic politics. And the word he always used to describe her was operational. And what he meant was she's focused on getting things done, and everything she did was in service of trying to meet those goals, not trying to make herself feel good or look good or, you know, get nice things said about her in the press. She really is, to an extreme degree among the politicians that I've covered and studied, focused on those goals to the exclusion of everything else. And that's really what you want in governance.

You don't want somebody who's always trying to look good, you know, always tweeting all the time. You want somebody who's going to do the work. And that seems like she's that sort of person in the picture you paint in the book of her wanting to do the good work, do the governance. And we actually need more of her type of people in the government because we need some governance. I mean, right now it's just image crazy nut job stuff that's being put out from the other party in the White House. One other aspect of Pelosi that's kind of funny is she really loves

ice cream and chocolate ice cream she kind of got called out by the republicans when she opened her drawer i can't remember if i think it was for the tonight show or an interview and she opened up her freezer drawer with all the ice cream on it but she really loves chocolate ice cream to my understanding she does she as i mentioned you know the very first time I sat down with her, she had chocolate ice cream for breakfast. Chocolate is sort of her only indulgence, her only vice. I mean, this is someone who keeps an incredibly punishing schedule. She's 80 years old. I've never seen her in public without at least three or four inch heels. She does not drink alcohol. She barely seems to sleep or eat um but she does like her chocolate and so that is that is the indulgence that's her she doesn't drink caffeine either

she doesn't drink coffee really she doesn't drink coffee yeah so i mean that explains the ice cream for breakfast but it was interesting to see like all – I was watching the show, and I saw her drawing. I'm like, yeah, all right, go Pelosi. She likes ice cream. And, man, the GOP just jumped all over that, the elitists and the expensive – I mean, it was just stupid how crazy they went for it. And you're like, seriously, we're – this country is, you know, suffering from coronavirus.

We're going down the drain, and this is what you guys are after, Pelosi's whole thing for ice cream. Yeah, she doesn't drink coffee. I can't blame her. I would eat like a tub of ice cream every morning if I didn't have coffee, which I usually need a couple cups of in the morning. So it's an astounding book. Do you think if Biden wins, she's going to stay in Congress,

or do you think she might retire? I have no idea. I would not be particularly surprised either way. And one of the things that I report in the book that had not been previously reported was that after she did win the speakership back in 2018, one of the conditions that she negotiated with some of those holdouts, the Democrats who didn't want to vote for her, was she accepted a self-imposed term limit that meant that she could not stay on as Speaker past 2022. But then she went into her next meeting laughing and said,

well, actually, I was only planning to stay for one term, and they just gave me two. So I came out ahead in this whole deal. And this is, you know, a common tactic to good negotiators, right? The fake concession where you pretend to be giving up something that you actually didn't want. But so that to me was the only indication that I've seen, public or private, because she does not like to talk about it. And no politician wants to, you know, lame duck themselves. But she will get quite touchy if you bring up the subject of her

potential retirement. But that's the only indication that I could find that at least at that time, she was thinking about possibly the end of her career. She was looking ahead to possibly hanging it up. I think it probably does matter what happens in the election. But either way, you know, I mean, she's 80 years old, she's been at the top of the Democratic caucus for 17 years. A lot of the frustration with her has nothing to do with, you know, sexism or ageism or anything specific to her, but just the fact that if you're an ambitious young member of the House Democratic Caucus, you cannot move up and you haven't been able to move up into top leadership for 15 plus years now. So there's a lot of people who would just like to be able to turn over

to a new generation, the reins of leadership and allow a new crop of people to come off the Democratic bench and sort of make a name for themselves in national politics. But I can't really imagine what she will do when she retires, right? I mean, she has this incredible level of energy. And so the idea that she would just sort of retire to the vineyard that she owns in Napa and sort of see her grandchildren every now and then, I've got to think that she would be bored. And I can't imagine her becoming, you know, a lobbyist or anything like that, that people sometimes do when they leave public service.

So, you know, I think clearly the end of her career is not too far off. I wouldn't be shocked if she decided to hang it up, but she has repeatedly stayed, particularly after 2010, when the Democrats lost the House, a lot of people thought that that was when she would hang it up. And she stayed on out of, you know, I quoted, I spoke to a former staffer of hers who said everything that she does is motivated by this combination of obligation and entitlement, not meaning entitlement in a

negative way. You could just say confidence, I suppose. But she looks at the situation and she says, well, somebody's got to do this. And then she looks around and says, and sees that she's the best person to do it. So some combination of that and her just sort of innate toughness and stubbornness might make it impossible for her to retire, even if all the conditions are there. And yeah, I saw someone complaining today on Facebook about the ageism factor. They're like, here are all these old people in Congress and the White House, and we need to get the average age of Americans. I think this was 67. But even then, I just can't imagine anyone like her, you know, I can't imagine anybody but her getting us through this time and giving us hope and leading us through some of the challenges we're going.

Because he is cold and beaten down just about everybody else in government that are afraid of him, they're scared of him, and she seems to be the only one who can stand up to him. Well, you know, there's this question of who might succeed her is a very, a taboo, but very hot topic among, you know, the House Democrats. And one of the criticisms that she has gotten a lot is that she hasn't groomed a clear successor, right? Her sort of deputies in leadership are all her age also, Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer. And most people think that when one of them goes, they will all go. But that means it's sort of an open question, who might succeed her? And there are a lot of names that get batted around, but she hasn't clearly given her blessing. And again, I think it's, you know, not wanting to be a lame

duck. And I think that she sees that anybody that she sort of anointed to come after her would quickly become a threat to her if they wanted to move up faster than she wanted to get out. But she also, you know, she's someone who really believes that power is not given to you, you have to take it. And from the time that she ran for leadership against the wishes of the male House Democratic leadership, she saw that the power was there for the taking, and she took it. So when people say, you know, when are you going to pass the baton? She says, well, everybody's got a baton in their handbag. It's up to them to take it out. And so she really believes that, you know, if somebody wants that position, they have to fight for it. They have to show that they have what it takes to find the support among their colleagues and do the blocking and tackling and

wrangling of votes, you know, because that really demonstrates the same kind of leadership qualities that you need to run the House. The finding consensus among this very diverse group of colleagues and getting everybody on the same page, the same skills that you need for that internal campaign are the skills that will allow you to run the House effectively. So I think she wants to see someone prove themselves. I think that's think that's a, what is the fire, the fittest, you know, she, she knows how to, how to raise a team and she knows how to raise leaders. And she knows

that's probably how one's going to emerge where she picks one, then it, you know, they don't, they don't really exemplify maybe, or win over the, the position that they should be awarded. I think she's brilliant. I really do. And I think, unfortunately, she's undervalued by a lot of people, especially in the American public, where they, you know, like they say, they're so used to seeing the Kim Kardashian image people, and they think highly of them, sadly.

But the politicians that are working hard and doing the work, you know, they don't have time to appear on camera or care about, like you say. And so hopefully and I think she will be. I think as history fades and it just remembers a few figures, she's going to stand out as a as a very key figure against Donald Trump. In fact, if anything, you'll you'll have the whole, you know, here's one side and here's the other. And what and she was one of the few people. I mean, I can't think of anybody's really stood up to her. I mean, uh, like she has, I mean, it's just iconic. Uh, she may even, well, I mean, he's going to remember for a lot of things, probably more so than anything might be negative, but, uh, uh, she also might be president. I mean, Trump, he claims he's joking now, but the whole transfer of power thing where he claims to transfer the thing.

I think The Atlantic has done some reporting where they're saying, well, on January 20th, they have to either elect either Biden or Trump or Pelosi actually becomes president. That might be interesting. It seems a little far fetched to me, but she me, but she is in that line of succession. But, you know, it's been interesting, you know, as we speak, RBG is, you know, lying in state at the Capitol, the first woman ever to lie in state. And I think there's a lot of similarities between the two of them, right? they're both partisan Democrats, never shied away from being in the political trenches, never tried to be all things to all people, knew where they stood on the issues, and you could sort of take it or leave it. People who broke barriers for women and who I think deserve to be celebrated no matter which side you're on, just for their effectiveness and for the barriers that they

broke and the example that they leave for little girls who are growing up today, opening up new possibilities for American women. So I think she's a very similar figure who deserves to be recognized in the same way. I think so I think so too. In 2018, uh, prior to the election, I was promoting that, you know, I'm sick of seeing these pictures in Congress of all men. I'm sick of seeing of all white men.

Let's put it that way. Uh, the don't represent this country. Then we need to balance. And I said, I started really talking about social media and my audiences about how I'm tired of this. And I said,

in Nevada, uh, I'm voting for 100% women. Like, even if you're like a judge, like I, you know, really, you're not with a party. I'm voting for 100% women. I'm going right down the line, women, women, women. And I promoted it, talked about it. I think I even published my, my, uh, my, uh, ballot. And, uh, in lo and behold, probably nothing to do with me, but but probably people the same sort of venue of like we're really sick of this too uh las vegas nevada of course nevada uh put in uh its largest

body of women i think that have been in any legislature and they have been showing that what they've been doing is great things for empathy, children, education, healthcare. And this is why I really champion putting women into office more so is because, you know, I'm tired of the guys. I'm a guy. I know how we are. Let's go start a war and shoot things up and make money. Women are more empathetic. They care about the future. They care about children. They care about education. They can multitask where men just aren't good multitaskers. And so hopefully we find a good replacement for Pelosi if it's possible. I don't think we'll ever find anyone as iconic as her. But hopefully someone will rise through the ranks.

And, of course, we can get more women in office, which is what I would like to see. And I'm glad to see that now in the congressional pictures where you can see more women in office. So I'm a big proponent and supporter of that. And then seeing a Congress that represents what America looks like. If I was to walk into a diner and see what was in America, I'd love to see more of that. Anything more, Molly, we should know about you and your book as we go out. No, I think that about covers it. It is the Congress that Nancy Pelosi took the reins of in 2019. Not only was the centennial of women's right to vote, but it was the first time in history that there have been 100 women in the House of Representatives. And that's something that Nancy Pelosi has been working on for a long time,

trying to get more women to run for office. And, you know, she is a big, the biggest obstacle that people cite. The women that she tries to get to run will say, well, I couldn't go through what they've put you through, those attacks, all of the personal antagonism. But we are seeing, you know, record-breaking amounts of women running for office and organizing politically ever since Donald Trump became president. So I think Nancy Pelosi is really the figure who epitomizes this era for women breaking barriers in American politics. She's like the Beatles when they came on the first TV show there. And she's inspiring lots of people going to government. So that's good.

We like that. Guys, check out the book. Go to Amazon.com. You can order the book Pelosi by Molly Ball. Molly, what plugs and places where people can follow you on the interwebs? Yep. As I mentioned, I'm on twitter at molly esq esqe and i urge everyone to uh support your local independent bookstore if you can amazon is great and fine and you can have a book on your kindle

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