House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi shares her triumphs and tragedy | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on August 7, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Nancy Pelosi has been the most powerful woman in American history. She was the first female speaker of the House and remains an influential adviser to presidents, including Joe Biden in recent weeks. She was instrumental in passing everything from the 2008 financial bailout to the Affordable Care Act. But in her new book "The Art of Power" Pelosi starts out not with a legislative triumph but with a personal tragedy, when her husband was brutally attacked by an intruder who was searching for her. "The Art of Power" is on bookshelves now. USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page recently sat down with Nancy Pelosi to talk about what this book meant to her.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Susan Page:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Susan Page. Today is Wednesday, August 7th, 2024. And this is a special episode of The Excerpt.
Nancy Pelosi has been the most powerful woman in American history. She was the first female Speaker of the House. She remains an influential advisor to presidents, including President Biden in recent weeks. She was instrumental in passing everything from the 2008 financial bailout to the Affordable Care Act. But in her new book, The Art of Power, Pelosi starts out not with a legislative triumph, but with a personal tragedy, when her husband was brutally attacked by an intruder who was searching for her.
The Art of Power is on bookshelves now. I recently sat down with Nancy Pelosi to talk about what the book meant to her.
Tell me, you've written this new book, The Art of Power.
Nancy Pelosi:
Yeah.
Susan Page:
Why did you decide to write this book?
Nancy Pelosi:
I decided a while back to write it, but I didn't have time to when I was Speaker. And so after that there were four things that was in the room where it happened and I wanted to tell it from the side that we saw it. But then when I finally got a chance to write it, people said, "Well, you have to write about January 6th. You have to write about Trump. You have to write about what happened to your husband." So there are some other things in there, but it was never intended to or nor is it a memoir. It's about four decisions, two domestic, TARP and affordable health care, most important to me, and two foreign, China and the Iraq War. And that's really what the book was supposed to be about. Then it's placed in time in terms of January 6th, et cetera.
Susan Page:
Yeah. Well, you've certainly been in the room. Sometimes when people write books, I think they figure things out that maybe they didn't understand before. They get some insight that hadn't occurred to them because you spent so much time thinking about what it is that happened on these four big decision-making moments when you were in the room. Was there anything like that for you? Was there anything that occurred to you or that you understood that you hadn't really fully understood before?
Nancy Pelosi:
No, not really, because I had thought this through quite a bit. You're always learning in light of events to come, but I was reporting on what happened at the time. And I had notes, press releases. I had a record of what happened at the time. There are other views as to how other people saw it, and I respect that. I'm just telling you from the room where I was in, how I saw it.
Susan Page:
I want to talk about some of the specifics, but the biggest surprise to me was the Affordable Care Act chapter that really had some wonderful nuggets in it that we didn't know before. Was there one that struck you as the one... This is the one that's going to get them surprised?
Nancy Pelosi:
Oh, I think that was all matter of public record at the time. I think that President Obama's role in it was so substantial, and then only that he had a vision, but he knew the specifics of it all. And that was a joy to behold. And I try to convey that in the book.
Susan Page:
The opening chapter is about the attack on your husband and it's aftermath and it's heartbreaking. It's terrible. And it's not something that you've discussed in this kind of detail before. Was that hard for you to write?
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, it was hard because I would never even had the conversation with my husband. He has not had it with us, with our family, with me. The doctors like the fact that he's not revisiting it. It's very hard when he has to go testify in court because it's a revisiting of it. And what I know about it is what he testified in court that has been reported in the public domain. I know the consequences of his coming home and the rest, but we never discussed that night. And so it was very hard. It was very hard because it was hard to imagine what it meant for him, but also for our children and our grandchildren. It was very traumatic.
Susan Page:
Did you ever want to discuss it with him?
Nancy Pelosi:
I don't want to discuss it if he doesn't want to discuss it. If and when he's ready, he will. But as the doctors have even told us, the revisiting of it is traumatic.
Susan Page:
When I was reading this chapter, especially at the very beginning of it, where you get awakened in Washington to be told that this has happened, what struck me was you're a person who is usually so in control, so in command, and here was a situation in which you were, it was totally out of your control.
Nancy Pelosi:
That's right. Yeah.
Susan Page:
That must've been hard.
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, anything that has to do with the well-being of your family is the most, shall we say, important episode that you have to deal with. So when they were banging on the door, I was sure they had the wrong apartment. There couldn't be any reason they would be doing that. And then when they start ringing the bell, I thought, well, I better go see. And when I heard the voices of the security, I wouldn't have opened the door except it was a security saying they had to come in. And then I thought, this is... Now, is it my children? Is it our grandchildren? Because what could it be? It's your husband. Someone has broken into your home and attacked him. How is he? We don't know. Is he alive? We don't know. And it was pretty awful. It was pretty awful. Of course, it's not just awful about him, it's about the children and the grandchildren that we have to tell this to.
Susan Page:
You've been the subject of a lot of attacks yourself, not these kind of physical attacks, although there have been physical threats against you, but really fierce attacks. And you think of January 6th, that was a lot of the violence that was directed at you, but this was worse for you.
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, it was worse because it actually happened. It happened echoing January 6th. Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy? That's what they were saying in the halls of Congress, that they were saying in the hallway going into our bedroom in San Francisco. That's what he was saying. So that was awful because my husband is not political. He's a lovely gentleman, and he doesn't engage in political combat in any way. He didn't bargain for this when he got married. How did this ever happen? Well, it did, in terms of my being in politics. But he paid the price that night when the man was after me, and I felt... Of course, carry a lot of guilt about that, that I wish that I had been there, but I don't know what would've happened if I had been there. I don't know. Would've been terrible, I'm sure.
Susan Page:
Do you feel guilty about the attack?
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, of course. I mean, I feel guilty that he would be going for me and taking violent action against my husband, a centimeter away from death. Yeah, I feel guilty about that.
Susan Page:
That was on October 28th, 2022, so it's been almost two years, not quite two years. How is your husband doing now?
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, I'm hoping that by two years it'll be across a threshold. He's still on the mend. He's good, maybe 80%, but getting hit on the head is an ongoing affliction. And I'm hoping that with the progress that he's making that pretty soon he'll be where he was before.
Susan Page:
You write that it was a long time before he could go to the garden room where the intruder had broken in or go into the elevator where he had tried to escape. Is that still the case? Is your house kind of... I don't know, haunted by the intruder or have you and your husband gotten over that?
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, when he said that one day, let's go downstairs and watch the game, that was a big deal because he enjoyed it so much. That was his happy place. The sports, occasional cigar when I wasn't around, but he had designed that room and built it out to the garden and all of that, and so it was something that meant something to him and that it should be a place where an intruder would come in, millions of pieces of glass all over and other consequences of a head wound. And the elevator too. Because our stairs are pretty steep, as I say in the book, but he wouldn't go near the elevator, and then he did. So that was a transition for him, but it was a transition that he had to make. There was nothing we could make more appealing or whatever for him.
Susan Page:
Yeah. But now he goes all those places? Yeah.
Nancy Pelosi:
Yeah.
Susan Page:
And you said that he was... You wrote in your book that when you weren't around, he would sleep in a different bedroom.
Nancy Pelosi:
That's what the kids told me. Yeah. He didn't tell me that, but they did. Because I mean, imagine sleeping in a room where a man comes in with things for violence. Sometimes when I'm in the room, even with him, I'm thinking, oh, my God, how horrible.
Susan Page:
One of the things you write in your book, you say, "The scars from that night will never truly heal."
Nancy Pelosi:
No.
Susan Page:
Do you think that's right?
Nancy Pelosi:
Yeah, I do. I mean, we're all built for survival. The human being is built for survival to prevail, but it still carries its trauma.
Susan Page:
You write, "I do not know that we will ever feel safe." Do you feel safe yet?
Nancy Pelosi:
I don't know that I ever have even before that. Because the kinds of violence and comments that were made would provoke people to say awful things, that we're going to burn your house down. We know where your grandchildren are. Those kinds of things are horrible. We don't ever answer the phone in our house. Never. I mean here or... Well, our home is there. I work here. I live in San Francisco. But the other side had been so provocative is painting me as a demon, cloven feet, hood, horns in my head, blazing Devil, all of that. And there are people out there who are not as, shall we say, stable as maybe some of the perpetrators of this violence, instigating of this violence. We've had a number of incidences.
Susan Page:
So [inaudible 00:10:32] been a while since you felt safe?
Nancy Pelosi:
Well, I have to feel safe. I mean, again, we're built for survival, so you have to be optimistic and careful.
Susan Page:
Optimistic and careful. Those are probably a good thing. Just one other quote from the book on the subject you wrote, "This assault has truly had a devastating effect on three generations of our family." So you and your husband, your children, and your grandchildren. So everybody is still dealing with the aftermath of this attack.
Nancy Pelosi:
Yeah. Well, the fact is that at the beginning it was all about dad's recovery and that was nothing compared to how would this turn out. We didn't know how it would turn out, even though we knew that he survived. The doctors at the hospital performed a miracle at San Francisco General. They were remarkable as were the rest of the staff, as they are to all of the people who go there. They're a trauma center that is just par excellence, and we're very proud of it in our community. We didn't think we would be availing ourselves of it, but there we were. So there's that. So it was all about dad to begin with and how he was would be an indication of how well we would heal. But it's still... I mean, this is a grandfather, the sweet, lovely man that he is, having assault in his own home, in his own room, our own room is horrible.
Susan Page:
We've seen the rhetoric in our politics get so much harsher than it's been in modern times and actual violence, the attack on your husband. Even the assassination attempt this month-
Nancy Pelosi:
Terrible.
Susan Page:
On Donald Trump. Do these incidents like the attack on Mr. Pelosi, have they prompted people to kind of reconsider where we are, or do you think things are not getting better?
Nancy Pelosi:
No, I think that, again, we have to be resilient, but for a long time, women had said to me, I'm reluctant to engage or run for office, not because of physical violence, but verbal abuse that I took, I took the worst. I mean, I was the target. And I would say to them, "Well, it's worth it. We need you this, that."
Well, you may need me, but my kids do too. And I don't need my children coming home from school crying because somebody said something nasty about me in school, that somebody put in a commercial that isn't true and that has an impact.
Susan Page:
So what do you say to women you're trying to recruit to run, when they say that to you?
Nancy Pelosi:
I say to them, what I say to everybody, even from the start before the violence, know your why. Know you're doing this. Why did I leave [inaudible 00:13:17] five kids? Now they're grown. So I go from housewife to House member to House speaker for the children. That was my why. One in five children in America, living in poverty, going to sleep hungry at night. That just was in the greatest country in the world that ever existed. How could it be? So that's my why and all. Everything that I do, I see through the eyes of the children. I brought the House to order on behalf of the children. So when you get attacked, you know why you're there. You know why you're there, and that makes a difference. If you don't have a purpose or a goal or vision of all of this, then it's why not just go do something else where you're less of a target, but what your contribution to society would be respected without danger.
Susan Page:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you for joining us.
Nancy Pelosi:
My pleasure. Thank you.
Susan Page:
Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Susan Page. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi shares her journey | The Excerpt