Pod Insights The Ezra Klein Show Nancy Pelosi: ‘It Didn’t Sound Like Joe Biden to Me’ About this episode It’s been remarkable watching the Democratic Party act like a political party this past month — a party that makes decisions collectively, that does hard things because it wants to win, that is more than the vehicle for a single person’s ambitions.
But parties are made of people. And in the weeks leading up to President Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, it felt like the Democratic Party was made of one particular person: Nancy Pelosi. Two days after Biden released a forceful letter to congressional Democrats insisting he was staying in the race, the former speaker went on “Morning Joe” and cracked that door back open. And Pelosi has pulled maneuvers like this over and over again in her political career. When an opportunity seems almost lost, she simply asserts that it isn’t and then somehow makes that true. Sometimes it seems like Pelosi is one of the last people left in American politics who knows how to wield power.
Pelosi has a new book, “The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House,” and I wanted to talk to her about her role in Biden’s decision to drop out and what she’s learned about power in her decades in Congress.
Book Recommendations:
The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] .
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jonah Kessel, Emily Holzknecht, Kristen Cruzata and Sonia Herrero.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Ezra Klein? From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.
0:23 Ezra Klein? The remarkable thing about the past couple of months in politics has been watching the Democratic Party act like something we have not seen for a long time: a political party, a party that makes decisions collectively, a party that does hard things because it wants to win, a party that is more than the vehicle for a single, usually, man's ambitions. But parties are made of people, and in this case, the party was in particular made of a person: Nancy Pelosi, one of the longest-serving speakers, the first female speaker of the House, and one of the, it sometimes feels like, last people left in American politics, who knows how to wield power and knows why she wants to wield power.
1:08 Ezra Klein? She's in a new book, The Art of Power, and she came by The Times to talk about what she has learned, why she does what she does, and how she sees this moment in American politics.
1:25 Ezra Klein? Nancy Pelosi, welcome to the show.
1:26 Nancy Pelosi? Pleasure to be here.
1:28 Ezra Klein? So, we're talking on the day that Vice President Harris named Tim Walz as her vice presidential pick in the campaign. He served with you in the House. He is the first former member of the House to be on a ticket, since Al Gore, on a Democratic ticket, at least. What was he like in the House? What can you tell us about him to help us get to know him better?
1:46 Nancy Pelosi? He was remarkable in the House. He came, winning a Republican seat, so he was a red to blue, but he came as the longest-serving non-commissioned officer in the military to ever to serve in the Congress. So, he was on a path of Veterans Affairs and the rest. He came as a child who had worked in farming as a child, and so that the rural America was a big priority for him. And so, when I hear people talking about where a liberal is, I'm like, wait a minute, this is not the same person. He was right down the middle. And just as I was going off the elevator, I got a message from his classmates.
2:29 Nancy Pelosi? They're having a Zoom event fundraiser for him, which they were happy to invite me to.
2:35 Ezra Klein? His, his house classmates?
2:37 Nancy Pelosi? His house classmates. He's very popular in the house. Very popular in the house. Members are so excited about him because he's a wonderful person. Just normal, lovely, wonderful guy. But the Veterans Affairs issue, that's something you're elected to and it's competed for. And he won their confidence in that regard. But let me just say, he called me right after this, shall we say, opportunity arose. I know how to make this case. I know how to differentiate. I can get this done. I'm, I'm putting myself out there. And who'd have thunk it? You know, here he is, Governor of Minnesota, and he's putting himself out there. And then he comes up with Weird, which becomes viral and the rest.
3:22 Nancy Pelosi? And here he is. So I have to give him a lot of credit for not only being a great governor and values-based and visionary and all that, but being quite an adept politician.
3:35 Ezra Klein? Experience as a governor is very prized. Presidency, people talk about executive experience. People talk about experience in, in the Senate. Joe Biden was partially on the ticket with Obama due to his background in the Senate. What do you learn in the House that you don't learn from being a governor or being a senator?
3:53 Nancy Pelosi? Being a governor is a different story. That's an administrative management experience. That is different. And we're very proud that we have so many. If you read my book, you don't see too much, shall we say, patience with a senator and a senator and a senator and a senator and a senator. Because what they do, they bring their staff, their staff, their staff. And there's such a Senate-centric attitude to what will come past the Senate will. We're a bandwagon, they're a convoy. So I'm glad to see somebody with a House experience going into the executive branch.
4:30 Ezra Klein? You make the argument in the book that members of the House are more retail oriented. What do you mean by that?
4:35 Nancy Pelosi? Well, I mean that they are used, we have to run every two years. So we're close. And that's as our founders intended, that we would be close to the people and run each two, every two years. They run every six years. It's a whole different story. Not that we don't value them, what they bring to it and all that. But ours is, shall we say, a little more rough and tumble, a little more impatience to get things done and a little more closeness, whatever the word is, to constituents, our bosses. We consider them our bosses.
5:11 Ezra Klein? One of the ways Walz has changed the campaign quickly is the injection of the word and the idea of weirdness into it. And that ended up flavoring how I read some of your book because you have a very funny chapter, actually, on Donald Trump that is largely about him being very weird in conversations with you. So what have you thought about, first, the bringing of weirdness as an attack into the campaign? And two, like, how well does it describe your experience of Trump and the Republicans who have followed him?
5:44 Nancy Pelosi? I think weird is too complimentary a word for them. I mean, weird is weird, but wrong is even different. It's a good word. I mean, it's on the path, but I think that dangerous is probably, but it's not as, shall we say, appealing a word. It sounds confrontational, but I think they're very dangerous. Weird people may be dangerous, but not all.
6:09 Ezra Klein? It strikes me that one reason it's connected in the way it has is that it is deflating. I think in many ways, Joe Biden often wanted Trump's threat to be the center of the campaign. And this feels like an interesting inversion. It's about making them smaller, pushing them more to the side, grabbing hold of normalcy, not making them into a sort of unstoppable supervillain.
6:29 Nancy Pelosi? Well, to that end, one of the things that my understanding is that
6:36 Nancy Pelosi? Trump does not like to be laughed at. And this made people laugh at them. The weird thing is they're dangerous. Oh, these are weird. People laughed and they don't like to be laughed at. That's why he had a thing about me because I was making people laugh at him.
6:53 Ezra Klein? So I was struck. So JD Vance, his initial attack on Walls was that Walls is a San Francisco style liberal. I happened to talk with Walls a week ago and he told me that he had actually just been to San Francisco for the first time a few weeks ago. But it got me thinking. So you're a San Francisco liberal and you were a very, very successful Speaker of the House. Kamala Harris, a San Francisco politician, Vice President, now the presumptive nominee. Gavin Newsom, a San Francisco politician.
7:22 Nancy Pelosi? Oh, he's a mayor.
7:22 Ezra Klein? Yeah, got himself sort of, has become a real national Democrat in a way I wouldn't even have expected a couple of years ago. San Francisco actually has a pretty strong record right now of training politicians who become national figures, who seem quite adept in power, at throwing a punch, at taking a punch. And it's like, the list could go on right now. Ro Khanna, who's outside San Francisco by a bit, but has become an important sort of nationalized figure. I think Scott Wiener in San Francisco has become a very influential figure. LA politicians haven't been playing as much at such a national level. And you could look at a lot of different cities across the country that don't seem to be generating as many national figures.
8:04 Nancy Pelosi? Well, some of ours are Silicon Valley too. And Eschew, Zolofkin, Rowe, they're all kind of one of the par, those are top Democrat in the California delegation and a leader in the Energy and Commerce Committee and all the tech issues that are there. And, well, I could name quite a few other people, even more prominent than us or anybody you named, who came out of San Francisco. We had Leo McCarthy, who was the Speaker, Willie Brown, who was the Speaker, and Dianne Feinstein, of course.
8:37 Ezra Klein? But so why has San Francisco trained so many politicians to be so adept at wielding both power and media?
8:44 Nancy Pelosi? Well, it's all about the why. Why are you even into this? It's a place that is an intellectual resource, whether we're talking about saving the planet, whether you're talking about LGBTQ rights, whether you're talking about one's right to choose. You name any subject and there is a bedrock of.
9:04 Nancy Pelosi? Support for it, and again, intellectual resource as well as strategic thinking about how to get things done. It's highly educated in the whole region, beautifully diverse in terms of people who are there. I mean, in my district, we have every religion or none, have every political thought or whatever, and a lot of success, but a lot of need, a lot of need. So it's, again, a challenge to conscience, the intellectual resource, and the universities, Cal, Stanford, University of San Francisco, and all of that, as a resource to it.
9:45 Nancy Pelosi? So when it comes to the politics, it's a network of allegiances. It's not easy. I mean, it's competitive, and there are loyalties, and there are loyalties, and so you have to get through all of that. Look at Kamala. Kamala, she ran against the incumbent. I was actually for him because he was for me, and his family, the Howland family, was a major, major Democratic progressive family, and beautiful, and she ran against him, she won. So she had courage. Now, she had courage to go for it. And then, she ran for Attorney General. It was a very tough race.
10:26 Nancy Pelosi? It was a mass primary, but she figured out a way. So when people talk about it, I say, you know what? She's not only a person of deep faith, which I personally admire in her and her commitment to public service. Officially, she's strong, she knows what she cares about, and she fights for it. Most recently, we see with the woman's right to choose and other issues. And politically, she's astute, but you don't realize it, but when you see, she got to be District Attorney, she got to be Attorney General, which is tough.
10:59 Ezra Klein? That was a tough race, very close.
11:00 Nancy Pelosi? And then she got to be Vice President, and as soon as there was an opportunity, we thought there could be an open. Opportunity if people wanted to run and they could have, but she locked it down right away.
11:12 Ezra Klein? Tell me about how she did that. She coalesced a party very rapidly.
11:15 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah, well, I think the thought was that if this were to happen, but it happened fast. He, we, none of us had any idea he would do it that Sunday. Oh, well, I didn't have any idea. Most people didn't. So when he did that and endorsed her, then the thought was everybody wanted an open process. Let's see the talent. Let's see the bench of the Democrats and let them compete and see what they can attract. But when he endorsed her, then it was, are you with Kamala or not? And she moved quickly. She really moved quickly. And again, a sign of her adroitness in terms of being politically astute. So every step of the way, except for her race for president, which enabled her to be vice president.
11:59 Nancy Pelosi? That wasn't a success per se, but it led to it. So it was more the appetite that people had to win. I mean, my whole thing in all of this is our goal is to make sure that Donald Trump never sets foot in the White House because he's beyond weird. I won't go into all the adjectives. When you make a decision about your goal, you have to make every decision in favor of reaching that goal. But the most important part of the decision is the candidate and the campaign, the candidate and the campaign. And it didn't seem as if there was a campaign in place.
12:43 Nancy Pelosi? And it was discouraging to people. So when an opportunity presented itself, people grasped it because it was, well, I'd like to see an open thing. But then when it got in, we're running with the ball. We're running with the ball. I always say to them, I have the three Ms, but we have the three noes. No wasted time, no underutilized resources, and no regrets the day after the election. So that decision about the campaign, or per se, the person.
13:14 Nancy Pelosi? Was the critical thing. And when that changed, the people who had been discouraged were overwhelmingly, I mean, just overwhelming.
13:22 Ezra Klein? Watching the pent up energy express itself has been something.
13:26 Nancy Pelosi? It's beautiful to behold. And my members, see, the members, I call them my members still, but the members were so down. And then they became, not that they were losing. Thanks to Susan Del Benny, our D C C Chair and the leadership there, they were in good shape if Joe Biden lost by five points in their district, but not if he lost by seven. And so they weren't desperate. But when this changed, volunteers, small donor contributions, just a whole different thing. Now we have to sustain it.
14:03 Ezra Klein? There was a sort of remarkable feel for the timing of different things throughout that process. I want to quote from your book that caught my eye. This is about how you are a speaker. And you say that a speaker, quote, "You must demonstrate a plan and you must act without hesitation. The minute you hesitate, your options are diminished. The longer you wait, the more your options are diminished." Tell me about that principle.
14:32 Nancy Pelosi? Well, the thing is, is that I make the comparison as being a member of Congress. It can be deductive, study it, learn it, hearings, constituent meetings, this or this. But sometimes when you're the leader, or the speaker, or an executor, like the President of the United States, or a governor, you have to act intuitively. And the minute you hesitate, everybody starts acting to protect their interests, which reduces your success.
15:07 Nancy Pelosi? Nine out of 10 times you'll be right. That's not a bad average.
15:11 Ezra Klein? Maybe nine out of 10 times you'll be right. I'm not sure we all have that average.
15:14 Nancy Pelosi? Well, you have to know. You have to know. They say, trust your gut. Well, with your gut, unless you know what you're talking about. You know the appetite of voters and their this or that, that you have listened. Don't start listening that day. You might take a quick tally to make sure everybody knows the direction you're going in. But I completely subscribe to you act, you'll prevail. And they know you're going to act, so they won't mess with you. I mean, I should say it in a nicer way than that. They know you're going to act. They might curb their enthusiasm until another time.
15:53 Ezra Klein? Well, when people believe you're going to act, it changes their strategy.
15:57 Nancy Pelosi? It does. They want to negotiate for another day. And that's always leverage, too. They have leverage. You have leverage because they may want something another day.
16:07 Ezra Klein? You did something over the past couple of weeks, month, that I actually found, in a way I don't usually find strategic movements sort of remarkable and inexplicable. And I'm not going to ask you about anything you did or didn't do in private. I want to be delicate about this. But July 8th, Joe Biden sent a letter to members of Congress. And he said, the debate about me running is over. I'm running. I was voted for by 14 million people in the Democratic primary. Are you trying to take away their voice? We're done with this. Two days later, you went on Morning Joe.
16:37 Speaker 02 So, Madam Speaker, you just went through the president's record. But let me ask you about the current moment. Does he have your support to be the head of the Democratic Senate?
16:45 Nancy Pelosi? It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short. The, I think, overwhelming support of the caucus, it's not for me to say. I'm not the head of the caucus anymore. But he's beloved. He is respected. And people want him to make that decision, not me.
17:12 Speaker 02 He has said, he has made the decision. He has said firmly this week, he is going to run. Do you want him to run?
17:19 Nancy Pelosi? I want him to do whatever he decides to do.
17:22 Ezra Klein? I've been having House Democrats text me all that day before. They said, it's over. It's a fait accompli. He's quelled this. You walked out and reopened the space for deliberation.
17:35 Ezra Klein? By saying something that in a way didn't make logical sense, he had made his decision. Then everybody else picked up your template. We're waiting for him to make that decision. Where did that come from?
17:47 Nancy Pelosi? Well, I wanted to see a campaign that could win. Because I had made a decision that I stayed in Congress to defeat, what's his name? Because I think he is a danger to our country. It's not like a Bob Dole or a George Bush or something like that. We have a difference of opinion. It's patriotism or autocracy or democracy. It's a different thing. I actually was on that show because I was bringing Svetlana so that people could hear about Belarus. That was our main purpose that morning. I didn't accept the letter as anything but a letter. I mean, there are some people who were unhappy with the letter. Let me say, some said that some people were unhappy with the letter.
18:32 Nancy Pelosi? I'll put it in somebody else's mouth. It didn't sound like Joe Biden to me. It really didn't. So my main purpose, though, was to say, stop saying things because he has NATO here. If you have something to say, save it for later until they're gone. Because this is a big deal, the summit of NATO, which he has strengthened, grown, and now is hosting. And they're doing great things. And he's the center of it all. Save your comments for later.
19:06 Ezra Klein? But the thing that was happening in that moment was that as time was moving forward, the space for options was diminishing. That's what it felt like to everybody watching this, covering it, to people inside it. And you sort of flipped that.
19:21 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah.
19:21 Ezra Klein? And reopened the question of deliberation, right? I mean, as you said, you said, "Let's talk about this again after NATO." And that, it's like you put a wedge in a door that somebody was trying to slam closed. And every time you slammed it, it just sort of popped back open a little bit. I've actually seen you do this a few times. I've covered politics with you at the center of it for long enough. I remember watching you do this with the Affordable Care Act a number of times after Scott Brown won that Senate seat, Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, and felt like the bill was collapsing. You have a sort of tendency, when a thing is beginning to fall apart, to simply assert that it isn't. And to sort of reopen people's imagination about the options. You talk about that in terms of intuition. But sort of how do you know when something is breaking?
20:05 Ezra Klein? And how do you know when it can actually be held together? In those two cases, maybe?
20:09 Nancy Pelosi? Well, I see everything as an opportunity. No matter what it is, it's an opportunity. An opportunity for change, an opportunity to grow, whatever it is. So when we did the Affordable Care Act and they were like, now you're dead. I mean, that's the press, now you're dead. I'm not. We are not passing up an opportunity of a generation that people have been trying to do, presidents have been trying to do for a hundred years.
20:35 Ezra Klein? So this is after Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy dies.
20:38 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah, he died.
20:39 Ezra Klein? Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts. And I covered the Affordable Care Act very, very closely. And it felt to people like it was going to die. But the message a lot of Democrats took off of Scott Brown's win was this is politically lethal. And for many, it ultimately was, at least at that period. And we should abandon it. We've gone too far. They were getting yelled at in town halls. And the feeling was that you pulled that back from the brink.
21:04 Nancy Pelosi? Well, let me tell you. So when the Senate bill, which was real stinkeroo. I mean, there was no way we were going to vote for it. But finally, they passed, at least they had a vehicle. And we had our vehicle and we were going to go to conference. So we're all set to go to conference like the next day after the election. Boom, you're dead. But the conference that we that we were engaged in prepared us for what we would put in reconciliation. So I knew we had reconciliation. So we didn't need 60, but we needed to have something that our House Democrats would vote for.
21:42 Nancy Pelosi? So the consensus that was built in conference prepared us for something that we could do in reconciliation and pass because there was no way.
21:52 Ezra Klein? Yeah, but you needed to stiffen your members to pass even that. A lot of them wanted to flee.
21:57 Nancy Pelosi? Oh, no, they didn't want to pass it at all. I said, it stinks because see what we had to do, which was worse because of reconciliation, which is. Weird. They all kept saying to me, "Just pass the Senate bill." I said, "I wouldn't even vote for that thing, much less bring it up." And I, my members are not voting for it. It's a terrible bill. You have missed an opportunity and you don't have things in there that you should. But I don't vote for a bill for what it doesn't have, but I'm not voting for it if I don't like what it does have. But then they came to us, and this was horrible. But the parliamentarian says that you cannot pass your bill,
22:37 Nancy Pelosi? the Senate bill, and add your amendments until this bill is signed into law. Oh, my God. That meant I had to go to the members and say, "That stinking, lousy, rotten, nothing bill from the Senate. We're going to have to vote for it." So it gets signed into law, then Harry gets these passed. We stick it here, and then we have a victory. I hate the bill, but President was on the line. Harry Reid was on the line, and I was on the line. And they voted for the stinking, lousy bill that I was never going to bring up, that I was never going to vote for. But we had to do it. Senate President, he signs it, comes back, we amend it, they pass it, and then we have the success that we went out there for.
23:22 Speaker 03 Let's just think I yield the balance of our time to the gentlewoman from, I yield one minute
23:30 Speaker 03 to the gentlewoman from California, who has led the way in this quest for health care reform tirelessly, persistently. She's brought us to this moment of decision. The gentlelady from California, the Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi.
23:48 Nancy Pelosi? After a year of debate and hearing the calls of millions of Americans, we have come to this historic moment. Today, we have the opportunity to complete the great unfinished business of our society and pass health insurance reform for all Americans that is a right and not a privilege.
24:13 Nancy Pelosi? I was sorry we never could get it because the Senate wouldn't do it. Public option would have saved us money and stuff, but we couldn't get it. But we put provisions in the bill that compensated for that. So it wasn't so bad, but it wasn't as good as it could be. But the reconciliation piece, I guess they just didn't think we would do. I don't know what they thought. But we were not, not going to pass the bill. And President always stuck with us. I'm not saying all these people did, but the President always, he was wonderful.
24:45 Ezra Klein? There are people in the White House who thought it was time to, time to cut bait. Go for a mini bill.
24:49 Nancy Pelosi? Who were they thinking? Go run for office yourself. I mean, this, this ain't going to happen. Okay, you got that?
25:19 Ezra Klein? Before you were in Congress, you were the state chair of the California Democratic Party.
25:24 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah, I thought I was the queen of the world, the biggest party in the country, grassroots organizing, owning the ground with your message, developing the candidates. Oh, my God, it was heaven.
25:33 Ezra Klein? But you're a party person, which not everybody is these days. One of the most remarkable things to me about watching, covering the Democratic Party over the past couple of months has been watching it do something collectively in very difficult, uncertain circumstances. I was sitting with a Republican, a significant sort of experienced Republican, and I was asking him, why were they so surprised by the switch? Why was there so little talk of Kamala Harris at the Republican convention? And he said, we never thought they would do it. The Democratic Party has held together as an organization, an institution in recent years, not just in the past couple of months, and the Republicans haven't.
26:15 Ezra Klein? Look at the speakers on the Republican side, how many of them have been deposed, rendered powerless, their lives made miserable. John Boehner left, whistling zippity-doodah. Tell me about how you have kept. Democrats thinking and acting like a party, how you've empowered them to do that, and maybe how they've empowered you to sort of act with power inside the party.
26:38 Nancy Pelosi? Well, here's the thing. I see myself as a weaver at a loom. And we have all these members, and that beautiful diversity. Seventy percent of our caucus are women, people of color, LGBTQ. That's not the only diversity. It's geographic, it's generational. It's everything that you can think of. It's philosophy and the rest. But they all know that why they're Democrats. So you have to know your why. Otherwise, what are you doing that? They know why they're Democrats. And some of the ones that might seem the most close to the edge in terms of a vote are the last ones who would become Republicans because they know what the Republicans are or aren't. And you make everybody know that what I'm weaving here
27:22 Nancy Pelosi? depends on all of you. Treating each one of you respect, every thread makes a tapestry that is so beautiful. And you're part of that. So if we are not unanimous on something, that's OK, just as long as we have the consensus to proceed. So you may not be part of the unanimity or even part of the consensus, but respect it because tomorrow is another day and you're issue something you're more interested in regionally, whatever it is, and that tapestry will be there for you.
27:59 Ezra Klein? But that should be true for Republicans, right? It should be true for Republicans that the shifting coalitions benefit them over time. It should be true for Republicans that they have interests that weave in and out. And it has become less true, right? The range of motion for Kevin McCarthy.
28:14 Nancy Pelosi? Yes, and if you don't believe in governance.
28:16 Ezra Klein? That's what holds it together for Democrats.
28:18 Nancy Pelosi? And you don't believe in science. If science tells us we have to do this to protect the planet and we need these protections. They don't want the protections, the science, or the governance that goes into doing this. So you're dealing, it's very hard to find leverage with people who don't have really any beliefs or any agenda. It's hard to negotiate with somebody who wants nothing. And so it's respect, it's listening, it's building off of the information that people have. It's not anything coming from the top down. It's all bubble up from the caucus. And there's one word that I attribute to my caucus, which is courage.
29:04 Nancy Pelosi? They have the courage to go out and make the vote. They believe that this is what we need to do. And if there's a path that shows that this can become law, and that courage, because I know the other side's going to go out and paint the thing like it's poo poo and kaka when we think it's chocolate ice cream.
29:23 Ezra Klein? You know, Bernie Sanders or AOC, they often argue with where the Democrats end up, but they often vote for the bill in the end. I mean, Sanders was there on the Affordable Care Act in every vote people needed. He wasn't shutting the government down like Ted Cruz. Is the thing, in your view, that broke the Republican Party's ability in the government to act as a coherent institution? The fact that they just don't believe in or want enough from the government?
29:50 Nancy Pelosi? One of the things I love is being a legislator. It's a really hard work. I mean, I don't, I'm not saying that it's a complaint. I love it. I mean, I love it. It's a love, I love it. But it's people are working all the time, developing issues, developing policy, whether they start with a bill and or take it through the process, take it home, listen to constituents at home, see what the possibilities are on the other side of the aisle, the other side of the Capitol. So it's, it's a triumph when you pass a bill. It's a triumph, especially if it's going to be signed into law. But you have to have goals. You have to have a why, that come back to the why.
30:34 Nancy Pelosi? And you have to have respect for other people's views and who's going to take the lead on something. And some people want to always be in the lead, but they don't really produce votes. It's like, that's interesting. Okay, see you later. But.
30:50 Nancy Pelosi? But tomorrow, you know, maybe that'll be another day. But everybody has to know tomorrow is another day.
30:57 Ezra Klein? You told a story I really liked in the book about getting your members to vote for the Defense Authorization Bill.
31:03 Nancy Pelosi? Oh, yeah.
31:03 Ezra Klein? That included the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
31:06 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah.
31:06 Ezra Klein? Do you mind telling that here?
31:08 Nancy Pelosi? Well, it's a funny saying because we have been working so hard. We want to pass a all-inclusive hate crimes bill. That includes trans. Now, I'm talking about 15 years ago. We're talking about a long time ago. So it was a fight to do a fully inclusive hate crimes bill because businesses were afraid of bathrooms or something. It was awful. And they came to me and they said, if you take out trans, now this is a long time ago. If you take out trans, you can pass this amendment. I said, if we take out trans, we ain't never passing it in 100 years because we're never bringing it up. We're going to do trans, and that's the way it is. So bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
31:53 Nancy Pelosi? Matthew Shepard's mother comes, helps his campaign among the members. Barney Frank tells his personal story. It was a beautiful thing. So we finally passed it, even though corporate America was saying boys and girls are going to be in the same bathroom or something. I never quite got the bathroom thing. But anyway, so then it's time for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And it was horrible. It's not all the Democrats, well, shall we say, were as fully in board as we would have liked them to be. But we did get the number of votes for an amendment, for amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill. And Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Comes up, we pass the bill. Oh, my God. Even the chair of the committee, the Democratic chair of the committee, was against it.
32:38 Nancy Pelosi? But we passed it. I said to them, um, this is pretty exciting today. Now, this is Barney Frank and as you, everybody you can think of who was lefty, everybody, all the leftists up. You made history today. Yeah, we made history. We repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I said, no, you're going to make it twice. Why? You're going to vote for the first time for a Defense Authorization Bill. Don't ask us to do that. We will never, ever do it. I said, you like the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell? We don't have it unless we pass a bill. Well, what makes you think you know everything? What the Republicans always vote for the defense bill?
33:23 Nancy Pelosi? Not today. How do you know? Because I know, because I'm speaker. I know they ain't going to vote for this bill. How do you know? I said, I can see it in their eyes. I know them. I know them. They ain't, I'm giving my, ain't voting for the bill. Are you a wedge? I might be. I can read lips and I can see it in their eyes. They ain't voting for it. Nine Republicans, nine Republicans voted for the bill. That means overwhelmingly voted against. Now, we had some trouble in the Senate, so we had to split it up and this, that, but we got it passed thanks to Harry Reid. So I said, see, you made history twice in one day. Don't ever ask me to do that again. I'm a Muslim.
34:06 Speaker 04 I want to recognize Nancy Pelosi,
34:16 Speaker 04 Steny Hoyer,
34:21 Speaker 04 and Harry Reid.
34:33 Speaker 04 Today, we're marking a historic milestone, but also the culmination of two of the most productive years in the history of Congress, in no small part because of their leadership. And so, we are very grateful to them.
34:47 Ezra Klein? I want to go back for a second to, you could see it in their eyes. You talk in the book about what makes a good speaker. And you say strategic know-how, you say a policy background, and then you say, above all else, intuition. You're known as somebody who does know if the votes are going to be there. A lot of people don't. Speakers don't. Minority leaders don't. And you didn't say to me there, well, we had done a whip count. You don't have the Republican whip count in your pocket.
35:21 Ezra Klein? You're not a Republican. You also knew that the liberals would do the thing you were telling them ultimately they need to do. Where does that intuition come from for what people are going to do? Because it does make you good at that job, or did make you great at that job. It made you important in what's been happening in the Democratic Party in recent weeks.
35:37 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah.
35:38 Ezra Klein? There's something deep there. How do you explain why you have it? And what separates the people like you who have it in Congress from those who don't? How do you develop that women's or?
35:48 Nancy Pelosi? Well, there are many who do have it. So it's not just me. My whole thing with the members is they know I've never won anything. I didn't want to be pointed to anything. I didn't want to run for any other office. I loved being in the House. I loved the House, as I say in the book. You're close to your constituents. There's nothing more thrilling to me than to walk on the floor and say, I speak for the people of San Francisco, no matter what other honors may be bestowed upon me at the time. But you just watch and you see. You're always observing and learning and respecting and listening to what you think the other side might do. And whatever it is you might get from them. But I knew they weren't going to vote for this bill.
36:32 Nancy Pelosi? I mean, they're terrible when it comes to those kinds of issues.
36:37 Ezra Klein? But your side too. I think you're underselling this a little bit. I know that you, as Speaker, nobody thought you wanted to leave that job. I have asked many times over the years about processes you've been at the center of and said, well, how did she get them to vote for that? How did she know where they were going to go? How did she? I always think of intuition as the ability to make quick judgments based on a deep kind of knowledge, right? Something is behind that.
37:03 Nancy Pelosi? Yes, something is behind it.
37:04 Ezra Klein? You were known for being very good at staying in touch with your members, at having a sense of what they needed, where they really were. I thought it was striking in the book, very early in the book, when you're talking about your work as Speaker. You write with a lot of pride about all of the leadership positions you created. I think it's, you took it from eight to 18, something like that?
37:23 Nancy Pelosi? Seven to 18. Well, it was like seven, I've come in, about two thirds of them I created.
37:27 Ezra Klein? But early in the book, we end up having long chapters about Donald Trump. And the Iraq war, you're before a lot of that. You're talking about how important it was. You created these other positions that let other parts of the caucus have a seat in your leadership. There's something you did institutionally, organizationally that kept your finger on the pulse of it. How do you think about that? How do you know when you know where they all are?
37:51 Nancy Pelosi? Well, you know, I've spent a long time in committee work appropriations and intelligence, even some time on ethics. Not that I wanted to do that, but I was paying my dues to the caucus. So I was a dedicated committee member. I had no interest in running for leadership. Why would I want to do that when I could be doing appropriations or intelligence or any of that? So you get to know how the system works and who, what lights whose fire and the rest. And you're, as I say, you're just always listening. That is how you would learn is you're always listening. But also you have, you said the word before, you have to have a plan. This is the plan.
38:34 Nancy Pelosi? Because sometimes people say, I'm not voting for that because it ain't going, it ain't going nowhere and you're making me walk the plank. And I'm saying, well, no, we have to, again, this is a bandwagon. It's not a convoy that goes as slow as the slowest ship. We're, we're on, we're on the move and we have to show our constituents action. You know, they want to see that we're working and that we're trying and what we're doing and what the distinction is because it takes us outside. The outside mobilization is one of the biggest forces. It helped us with the Affordable Care, that's for sure, to pass and to save. It's not about just polling or anything. It's about the activism that you create.
39:17 Nancy Pelosi? We had 10,000 events to save the Affordable Care. 10,000 events. It wasn't about provisions of the bill. It was about, this is what it meant to my family.
39:53 Ezra Klein? You're a real partisan of the House. You quote John Dingell, the late, great member of the House, saying, "The Republicans are the opposition, but the Senate is the enemy." If there was no Senate, or at least if there was no Senate filibuster, if the House was what governed America, right? If it was the, if we were unicameral, one legislative body, how'd America be different today?
40:14 Nancy Pelosi? Well, I know advocating for that, but I do think the compromise that our beautiful visionary founders had in giving every state two votes, that was a compromise that created America. So then they decide that it's going to be 60 votes. So what are they saying, 40% wins? This is ridiculous, and this is what we have to fight. I mean, immigration, women try to choose, raise the minimum wage, all these kinds of things, 51 votes like that. And people get pressured, "Why can't you do what you said you're going to do? Well, we do it in the House, but they don't do it in the Senate. Well, what's that?"
40:55 Ezra Klein? Yeah, I mean, the cynicism creeps in, and I think understandably so. I mean, Democrats will run this year on protecting and reinstating through law the protections of Roe. But if they win, they're not going to have 60 votes in the Senate, even if they do keep the Senate, which means that they can't really do it because...
41:13 Nancy Pelosi? They have to get rid of the filibuster, the rescue package, 51 votes. IRA, 51 votes. Yeah, you see, even the CHIPS Act, all the Republicans want the CHIPS Act. Business community wants the CHIPS Act. You saw the excitement for the CHIPS Act, right? So some of the Republicans were saying to me, "We'd probably get like 35 Republican votes." Because they don't want Biden to have any success. So remember I said anti-science, anti-governance, anti-whatever the Democratic president is? They have a trifecta going. So they don't have to do anything, right? And they don't want to do anything. So they were going to give us 35 votes.
41:56 Nancy Pelosi? Some of the Democrats thought that we're giving money to corporate America or something like that, so we couldn't count on everybody. The night before, the ranking member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the Earth, that was the committee jurisdiction, makes a beautiful presentation about the bill and the bipartisanship that helped shape the STEM parts of it and the education. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Ten o'clock, I'm talking to Chuck on the phone and, and I get a thing on my phone. It says, McCarthy just told them nobody can vote for the bill and the ranking member has to argue against the bill, which was a shame.
42:38 Nancy Pelosi? They should at least let somebody else manage the opposition when this guy had just made this beautiful speech in there. So I say to Chuck, oh, we just lost all the Republican votes. Where do they go to school? I'm calling their university president. I said, you know, it's ten o'clock at night. I said, let me just tell my staff, tell the Republicans to go to hell. We're going to pass the bill without them. That was my message. I don't usually use foul language, but that was ridiculous. The CHIPS bill. So I said, just tell them we don't need them. We don't need them. We don't want them. So I didn't have the votes at that moment, but I figured I, one way or another, I had to leverage to get them.
43:23 Nancy Pelosi? So we get the votes. When we get to two eighteen, something like twenty-four Republicans came on board, but not until we passed it ourselves. That's how bad they are. They wouldn't even vote for the CHIPS Act to make us self-reliant as a country or all these products that go into everything that we, not that cup, but my phone, yours, that we do. And then one more, let's have to tell you this one more, because this one just defies everything. They don't want Roe v. Wade, right? I respect that. I come from an Italian Catholic family. You know, they don't, they think I'm a little too exuberant on the subject, but that's their problem.
44:08 Nancy Pelosi? I've had five children in six years and seven days. I know what I'm talking about here. So, the, I'm not complaining. It's beautiful for me, but why should I say that's what other people should do? So, we bring a bill to the floor. Kathy Manning of North Carolina.
44:27 Speaker 05 I'm Congresswoman Kathy Manning. I am proud to represent North Carolina's sixth congressional district. My bill establishes a federal statutory right for individuals to access and use contraceptives and for healthcare professionals to provide them. Congress must immediately pass this bill to ensure people can access their birth control without government interference. We are not willing to play defense on this critically important issue. We are playing offense.
45:01 Nancy Pelosi? Women have a right to contraception. Members said to me, you're letting them off the hook. They're going to look good voting for this. They're for contraception. Eight Republicans have voted for it. 195 voted against it. Some of them women. Women, is that our country? Is that freedom? Does the public know how dangerous they are? They're against abortion. You should love contraception, you know?
45:35 Ezra Klein? You wrote a book about the art of power. Trump, you wrote a book years ago, one of the foundations of his public reputation, The Art of the Deal. Still, he runs saying, look, I'm a good dealmaker. All these other politicians, these career politicians, in and out to make a good deal. America's always getting ripped off. These Republicans can't make a good deal in Congress. Like, you need me. You've watched Donald Trump working on deals. You have made deals with him. You've watched deals fall apart with him. What would you tell the American people about what Trump does and doesn't know about how to make a deal?
46:09 Nancy Pelosi? Well, if you're going to make a deal, you have to be true to your word. You have to be honest, and he doesn't have an honest. Threat in this body. I'll tell you, you hear him now schmoozing with, what's his name? Musk? When we did our last bill, he's going out as president. We're finishing in the lame duck, the bill, to keep government open and the rest of it. If you put one dollar in the bill for electric cars, I will veto the bill. One dollar. We had everybody calling him and saying, what is this? You're tying the hands of American prosperity. I mean, this is an industry. This isn't a company.
46:53 Nancy Pelosi? It's a nothing. We couldn't do anything on electric cars because he was so in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. So in the pocket of it. He would shut down government. And we couldn't let that happen. You know, we couldn't let that get rid of the creep. So I don't know what kind of a deal that is. That's not a deal. That's not if you do this, I'll do that. It's, I ain't doing nothing. Some of the other negotiations we had, he would not face reality. Like, this is one that means a lot to me because it's feeding the children. We wanted to have money for the children's program, school programs during the summer
47:35 Nancy Pelosi? when they were not in school and they still had to eat because that's where they got their food is when they went to school. But there was no money. There was no money. There was just no money. So it was a CR. We came like around now, it was a CR.
47:50 Ezra Klein? A continuing resolution.
47:52 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah. Has to be absolutely clean. You can't have anything in it. I'm talking to like Steph Curry and all these advocates for feeding the children. So he comes up with, I need thirty billion dollars to pay the farmers. He had ripped off the farmers with his China deal because they couldn't buy the products and all this stuff. The Chinese couldn't buy the products. So he was going to give them money to make up for his China stuff.
48:23 Ezra Klein? So Clean CR, just for people who don't know, just continues funding the government at more or less current levels. He says nothing can be in it and now he wants thirty billion dollars added to it.
48:31 Nancy Pelosi? Thirty billion dollars. And he said, oh, this is still clean with that in it. It's not clean. That's why I say in the book, either he's stupid or he thinks we're stupid. It ain't clean, mister.
48:45 Nancy Pelosi? Now, you're not getting it. Well, then I'm not, you're not getting it. Do you understand? You are not getting it. I have to have it, okay? I need eight billion dollars for the children's school program. Oh, can't do that. That's not clean. It's as clean as yours. So we got the eight billion dollars. But he was trying to pass off thirty billion dollars to cover his stupid, whatever you want to call it, on the China thing. He's like, he's the categorical imperative. Whatever he says, that's what it is. That's what it is. That's not a way to make a deal. What's that? Another bill, they came to me and said, absolutely no. You can't have any money for global anything, global health.
49:30 Nancy Pelosi? You can't have anything. No global, nothing beyond the regular population, nothing. I've told Elton John, Bono, Bill Gates, everybody you can think of. We ain't got no money for any vaccines or anything else because the president says no, blah, blah, blah. Oh, they said, we forgot. We promised Sudan seven hundred million dollars to be part of the Abraham Accords. Promise them seven hundred million dollars. And then they were going to not be at Rogue Nation, which, you know, is ridiculous. But nonetheless, this is Mnuchin. I have to have it. I promised it. Well, you didn't. I have to have the money.
50:12 Nancy Pelosi? I have to have four billion dollars for the vaccine program. So we got a seven hundred, we got our four billion for the vaccine program. So that was okay to change the rules for them, but they didn't know we were not going to do that unless there was something in it for our values.
50:30 Ezra Klein? I guess you could hear this and say, well, maybe what Trump does is he comes up with a very harsh starting offer. And then in the end, in these different stories, he got the thing he wanted. He got the money for the farmers. He got the money for Sudan. Is he actually, in a way, a strong dealmaker? Or is your argument here that he could have gotten more of what he wanted?
50:50 Nancy Pelosi? Yeah, he could have gotten more. He just didn't want us to get anything. But, um. He was not a person of any values. See, when you're doing the budget, see, I'm an appropriator. That's in my DNA, by the way. My father was one of the appropriations committee when he was in Congress. So I love it. I love every aspect. When they make presentations in the rooms, I listen to every single word. They're like, come on, it's time to go. Everybody else is leaving. I'm listening. He was like disgusting. Do you know what was holding up the, he calls it the budget bill, but it's appropriation. You know what was holding up? Money for food for women, impotent children. They didn't want to spend that much money because you know it was going to add to the national debt.
51:34 Nancy Pelosi? After they gave $2 trillion to the richest people in America, they couldn't feed poor women and impotent children. So no values, no anything. So I don't think that he was clever in any of it. He didn't think ahead. He didn't think ahead, or he could have had something better. But to throw his considerable weight around. Oh, I saw one the other day that said, said him, and he's saying Kamala is trying to find her color as they're spraying him with orange.
52:10 Ezra Klein? What do you think happens if Donald Trump wins a second term? The race is very close. It's very close in battleground states. It's possible. You've seen him before. You also have a sense of the kinds of Republicans who are now in Congress, which is different. Trump was dealing with a Republican party that was not fully bought into him in Congress in 2017. It's a very different Republican party now. What is possible, what would you predict would be true if him and the Republicans win in 2024 that wasn't true then?
52:40 Nancy Pelosi? I can't envision it. I cannot envision it. First time people thought, well, maybe he'll respect the institution or the presidency. Little did we know he didn't, but we thought he might. So, okay, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. We all want our president to succeed, whoever he may be. But then we saw how vile, how disgusting, how crooked, how everything he was. So now we have to make sure he doesn't win. And then everybody said, well, I didn't like Hillary because of this or anything. You know what?
53:17 Nancy Pelosi? Kamala is the person. He's the other one. That's the choice. We have to make sure he doesn't win. I can't even envision a situation where he would win. If he were to win and we didn't win the House, imagine how horrible it would be. Imagine how horrible it would be. I can hardly sleep at night as it is. But that would be unsleepable, unthinkable, impossible for our country. We just have to do it all. Own the ground. Own the ground, it's all over. I'm going to Michigan next week. I might know more after I come back from there. Because until you're on the ground in each of the states, you really and I've been Arizona, I've been almost every place,
54:01 Nancy Pelosi? but I haven't been to Michigan. I'll see what that, what that is. Meantime, Joe Biden, just a remarkable President of the United States. We have to make sure his legacy, which is our legacy, we pass that. A lot of my members had to take tough votes for it. So we want it to be recognized. But more importantly, we want people to avail themselves of the goodness of it all. And that's that.
54:29 Ezra Klein? And always our final question. What are three books that have influenced you? You'd recommend to the audience?
54:34 Nancy Pelosi? Oh, influenced me? I don't know if that influenced me. The Bible, of course. Books I like. Norman Lear used to say, that's interesting, what's next? So what book led me to what's next? Was one was one of the few Umberto Eco books that I could read with great ease, called The Island of the Day Before. The Island of the Day Before is about the age of wonder, which I love. The age of wonder when all these countries were competing in the world. You could measure latitude by the stars, but longitude, you had to have something else. So it's about that. And then that took me down the path of studying longitude and how
55:17 Nancy Pelosi? Where the first clock came, that could be on a boat and all that. So that opened doors, what's next? Another one is, I read over and over again, some multi-time, some just once, of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books. The one I like the best is Love in the Time of Cholera. It's all about the culture and the almost witchcraft of the region. But I've read all his books. There's one, I'm all of a sudden blanking on the author. Age of Wonder, have you ever read that?
55:51 Speaker 05 Uh-uh.
55:51 Nancy Pelosi? Oh, God, it's the best book. I used to give it to everybody. I'll send it to you. It talks about when Darwin went south. He really couldn't come home and publish for a long time because religious community couldn't accept that. So it was a couple of decades or at least before he could. So it's about that. But it talked about the first use of the word scientist, which was not used until like the 1820s or something like that. Because religion and science had to find its path, not necessarily together for a while. But that's a book you have to read. I'll send it to you because it is, I love it. I just love it because it's about everything.
56:36 Nancy Pelosi? It's all different subjects. And again, what came next? It's always what came next after that. So those are three I love. What influences me? Have an insatiable appetite for any books about our country and our founders and Lincoln, you know, everything. They founded our country. Imagine the courage fighting a war with the greatest naval power that existed at the time, based on a principle of democracy. They were so visionary. I'll just close by telling you this. I'm from Baltimore, you know, originally.
57:17 Nancy Pelosi? And the National Anthem was written there. So you know, when you go to the game and you come to the end, the end of the very home of the brave and everybody cheers. Well, I cheered before that. I cheered when it says, "Proof through the night that our flag was still there."
57:42 Ezra Klein? Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much.
57:43 Nancy Pelosi? Wonderful to see you. Thank you.
57:56 Ezra Klein? This episode of The Ezra Klein Show is produced by Elias Isquith. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Gald with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Roland Hu, Kristen Lynn. We have original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Semilowsky and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser, and special thanks to Sonia Herrera.
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