Pelosi takes sly dig at Trump in farewell speech as speaker
In her final speech Thursday as House speaker, Nancy Pelosi couldn't resist taking one final dig at former President Donald Trump.
"I have enjoyed working with three presidents," Pelosi said of her historic tenure as the first woman in U.S. history ever to hold the powerful position, acknowledging the three as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
She also served while Trump was president, but she did not include him in the list.
The mutual disdain between Pelosi and Trump has been on full display for years.
As speaker, Pelosi twice oversaw the impeachment of Trump in the House. In 2020, she tore up a copy of his State of the Union address in full view of television cameras. Meanwhile, videotaped testimony that was played before the House select committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, showed Pelosi fuming as she watched the conclusion of Trump's rally at the Capitol Ellipse.
"If he comes, I’m going to punch him out," she said after learning of Trump's desire to join his supporters at the Capitol. "I've been waiting for this, for trespassing on Capitol grounds. I'm going to punch him out, and I'm going to go to jail, and I'm going to be happy."
On Tuesday, announcing his candidacy for president in 2024, Trump framed the midterm election results as a victory over Pelosi.
"Nancy Pelosi has been fired, isn't that nice?" he said.
A week earlier, at a campaign rally near Dayton, Ohio, on Nov. 7, Trump referred to her as "an animal" for her role in orchestrating both of his impeachments in the House.
“I think she’s an animal, too, to tell you the truth,” he said.
His vitriolic comments showed no regard for the fact that only days before, Pelosi's husband had been attacked and seriously injured by a man with a hammer at the couple's San Francisco home. In a radio interview on Nov. 1, Trump even floated a baseless conspiracy theory insinuating that the intruder, who is alleged to have been politically motivated by far-right-wing ideology, had in fact been inside the home.
“It’s weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks,” Trump said. “But the glass, it seems, was broken from the inside to the out. So it wasn’t a break-in; it was a breakout. I don’t know. You hear the same things I do.”
Given this and countless other acrimonious exchanges she had with Trump, it is little wonder that Pelosi did not include him in the list of presidents she "enjoyed" working with. On Sunday, she was asked about Trump's latest White House bid.
"This is a person who has undermined the integrity of our elections, [who] has not honored his oath of office, who has encouraged people, strange kinds of people, to run for office," Pelosi told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "He's not been a force for good, so I don't think his candidacy is a force for good for our country. But that's up to the Republicans to decide who they will choose."
