Nancy Pelosi explains her optimism

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So, question.

Who's the most consequential American elected official over the last, say, 25 years?

Donald Trump is the obvious answer.

But you could say Barack Obama, Mitch McConnell, but I'd argue Nancy Pelosi, the former House

speaker and congressional leader of Democrats, who shepherded countless legislation over the

Obama years and some during the Trump years.

She's about to turn 86 next week, and her fingerprints are all over the most consequential

legislation that passed through Congress over the last couple decades.

Now Pelosi is set to retire after this midterm elections, but before that, I had the chance

to talk with her at this year's South by Southwest Conference.

And I wanted to put in front of her all the questions that I had.

What made her stick around Congress after she almost was going to retire in 2016?

How would she define her legacy?

And of course, considering the political violence that she's been around from January 6th to

what happened in her own family, how does she

retain faith and an electorate that seems to consistently be letting her down?

I asked her that and more in front of a packed house in Texas.

Let's dig in.

We are so grateful that Speaker Pelosi has come to South by Southwest to talk with us

at today's plane.

Now I'm so excited for this conversation, not just because of the long legacy that you

have in Congress and San Francisco, but also to really get a sense of how you view that

legacy yourself.

You won your first seat at 47.

You kind of mentioned this towards the end, but I know there's a lot of people here at

South by that, you know, are in their 20s and 30s are looking to make or eager to make

an impact.

I wanted to know what you, what you learned about timing and purpose from your own career

considering kind of you took a journey to get to where you are.

Well, first of all, I had no intention of running from, as I said, I had five children

in six years and seven days.

I keep reminding my archbishop, and the one of them was going to go into senior year

in high school, I was approached to run for Congress, and I said, well, I've never had

that ambition.

I loved advancing other people, but I had no ambition myself to be the one on the line.

And so I went to Alexandra that she was 16, young for going into high senior year.

I said, Alexandra, mommy's been, mommy's been asked to run for Congress.

I'll leave it up to you if you think, I'll tell you what it is.

It is, you know, about three nights a week, I'll be gone when Congress is in session,

and it's not always in session.

So what do you think, yes or no?

She said, mother, mother, remember I said, mommy, mother, get a wife, and I had never heard

that expression before, this is a long time ago.

What teenage girl does not want her mother out of the house three nights a week?

So then I did, and then later people asked me to run for leadership, and that was another

step forward, but it wasn't, that's why I keep saying to young women, especially who

asked me that, just, just know your why, why you would do it, and now my why was one

if I children in America goes to sleep hungry at night or lives in poverty, and that was

my why.

Know your why, because this is a rough and tumble business, and you can take the punches

if you know why it's happening, and you can throw the punches for the children if that's

your why.

You know, the slogan for your first campaign was Nancy Pelosi, a voice that will be heard,

and I love that.

Like, what did that mean to you then, and when you look back 30, 40 years later, what

does it mean to you now?

Well, it was sort of interesting that they would have that a voice that will be heard

the campaign decided that would be because they know that I knew a lot of people in politics

having been the party chair, and that, and so it worked, though, because who would have

thought that a voice that would be heard would become the speaker of the house, so they

all take great pride in their prediction.

What was the transition like going from behind the scenes, you know, as you were organizing

chair of the Democratic Party to making their transition to a candidate yourself, and

specifically like, you know, how did you deal with the public perception of it all?

Was that a transition?

Well, it was a transition, and I see I really like to talk about the past, I talk about

the future.

Look at there.

So, for me, I sort of got used to it right away.

They told me when you go to Congress, you love the issues, that's what motivates you to

be in the political arena and volunteer and recruit candidates and advance them.

So do it yourself.

You know, you love the issues, and that was issue driven, and that's really what you

know to get.

It's not about yourself, then, it's about what you're there, your purpose while you're

there.

You know, certainly the legacy of issues of legislation has been won.

That is undeniable from the American Recovery Act, the Dodd-Frank, the Affordable Care

Act.

You have shepherded through legislation has changed all of our lives.

Now you've been called the most effective speaker in history.

I wanted to know what is the skill or trait that you think made you so effective, because

we've seen, obviously, you know, and trumpiers and others, that job ain't so easy.

So why were you so good at it?

The thing about it is that when you're a little legislator, you have one, shall we say,

dynamic at work.

You have hearings, you have public comment, you do all those things.

And so you have time to make a decision.

When you become the speaker or the governor or the mayor or whatever, but the executive position,

you then have to act, or it's act.

And the reason you have to act is because if you don't act immediately, people think,

oh, she's going to think about it, and while she does, we'll take this option away,

of that option away.

So a nine times out of ten, you will be correct, or it will work because you, you know,

it will work.

And then you get the reputation that it will work, and as that.

But it is, it is really important to just make sure people trust your judgment, that you

know what you're talking about, you know, how to get something done.

The other thing is, nothing really happens, and this probably goes back to my childhood

and being party chair, nothing really good happens unless you have the outside mobilization

inside maneuver, outside mobilization.

And that is, like President Lincoln said, I'm quoting a Republican president, now President

Lincoln said, public sentiment is everything.

With it, you can accomplish almost anything without it practically nothing.

But for a public sentiment to prevail, people have to know, though you must, you have

to get it out there and engage public sentiment, and that is for everything.

I want to get back to the question of public sentiment, but before that, you said CNN's

Anderson Cooper something that I really found interesting.

You said that you thought America, you assumed that America would be much more ready for

a woman president than they would be for a woman speaker of the house, because you assumed

that the boys club of Washington was more tied and rigid than maybe the American people

sentiments were.

Of course, it hasn't turned out that way, and I guess I wanted to ask what should we take

from that?

Was the boys club of DC less rigid, or was the sexism of the American people just maybe

more than what we thought?

I mean, when I ran for leadership, even though other people had encouraged me to run for

it, but when I said I was running for leadership, the guys said, who said she could run poor babies,

like I'll be waiting for them to say I could run.

And then they'd say, why don't you all just make a list of things that the women want

and will do those?

What?

This is in this century.

Really?

It's not a glass ceiling.

It's a marble ceiling.

And they all had it lined up, and you go next, and I'll go next, and I'll go next.

And we're like, well, you know what?

We've been waiting over 200 years.

We're breaking in line so that we don't have a woman's speaker.

But I was a woman's speaker because I won the election, where is it?

You win, you get the gavel, and the gavel makes a big difference.

Your story is so built on kind of faith in the American people, and it seems as if that

is kind of core to your trust about them and elections and such.

But you know, I wanted to kind of gut-check that.

You've been set to retire in 2016 and 2024, and you know, Americans elected the president

that surprised you and many others, and I've kind of forced you back into office.

There's been some tough moments I'm thinking about the horrible attack on your husband

in 2022, or things even like the January 6th riots for you were in the building.

How are you retaining this kind of optimism in the American electorate when it doesn't

always seem as if that has been returned to you?

Let me just say I didn't finish the part about the woman president yet.

I do think that American people are ready for a woman president.

I don't think there's a misogynism about it.

I just think that you just have to get out there and compete.

It just hasn't.

You just have to compete.

It just hasn't happened.

We've had great people.

Hillary Clinton was probably the best qualified person to run for president, better qualified

than her husband.

I love the bushes, but she was better qualified, and better qualified than Barack Obama.

And he admits that, but it just didn't happen.

But it will.

More from Nancy Pelosi in a minute.

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month.

We're back.

It's today explains Saturday, and I'm here with former house speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I want to ask about your trust in the Americans.

I mean, let's go back to, it presents the 250th anniversary of our country.

And this is a glorious thing.

Our founders were such geniuses.

They were so remarkable in what they put together a country that was more remarkable than

anything that anybody had ever seen based on the greatest sentence ever.

They're all men are created and women are created equal.

But they believed in the goodness of the American people.

That didn't mean every single person, but it meant the goodness.

And that's what is the optimism now.

I do believe in the inherent goodness of the American people.

If they know, again, public sentiment, if they know what all this means to them, they

will make the right judgements.

And that faith is unshaken, even from those type of moments I've mentioned, of being in

the capital, of seeing the kind of growth of the political violence.

I mean, it seems as if those moments could be something that could shake that belief.

But it doesn't sound like that.

It was horrible.

I mean, they were coming after they were going to put a bullet in my f-word head and they

were going to hang the vice president.

I mean, this was an insurrection that was incited by the president of the United States.

Nobody expects the president of the United States to do that and you did our founders expect

that.

So you have to put it as an operation.

What is discouraging is when they try to change the narrative of what that was all about.

But nonetheless, we will win the election.

In November, there's absolutely no question.

I'll tell you if Garantita, the Democrats will take the House, maybe so big that they

send it as well.

And how King Jeffries will become the speaker of the House.

That's an absolute guarantee.

You don't, people say to me, you say I'm not arrogant.

I'm not arrogant.

I'm confident.

I know this will happen because we're making a decision that it will and we will make

every decision in favor to make sure that it does.

I mean, that was certainly my next question.

What informs that confidence?

I mean, to, you know, I certainly know that there's a lot of evidence of a backlash to

Donald Trump as we speak.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that people would prefer Democrats as the other option.

How are you so sure that Democrats take back the House and possibly win this in November?

Not really.

Are we going to win?

We're going to win substantially.

I'm a politician.

I say that very confidently and proudly.

You have to have, I say, the three M's for to win an election.

You have to mobilize.

You have to own the ground because we know the American people are good.

We know that what we want to do is in their interest.

We just have to make sure they, in other words, that people say, oh, people voted against

their interests.

No, they know what their interests are.

We respect that.

And by the way, our whole democracy is at stake.

You know, you know, that our whole democracy is, what is a democracy?

Freedom for our elections, independent judiciary, due process, rule of law, separation of power.

That's not making, we're not a democracy, we're a democracy.

But we save the democracy at the kitchen table, you know, at the kitchen table.

What we're talking about in terms of lowering cost, affordability, of course, but in people's

terms, lowering cost of health care and groceries and education and whatever it is, it's what

they are telling us they are voting on, okay, message, mobilization, and the money to

get it done.

They will have endless money, endless, endless money, endless, endless.

We don't have that, we have the people, and we'll have enough, because we have to, we

have to win the election.

So, if we think about those three M's, message, mobilization, and money, where we're

Democrats lacking to bring us to this point, I mean, if we think about 2024, which one

of those M's was the failure?

I think that in the messaging, the, I think in the last election, not to relitigate what

went wrong or this or that, but I think they out-technologyed us, what do you mean by that?

The technology has moved, oh six, it's like ancient history, 18, even way back one.

And so, you have to be, you have to leapfrog over because the technology and how people

communicate with each other, if people don't think they're getting the message, you

aren't communicating.

I see, I hear you.

Let's take your certainty that democracy.

It's not about what they didn't do, it's about what we are doing now.

Okay.

Future.

Let's take your certainty that Democrats do in the House.

I want to ask about that kind of impact.

I think right now there's a big question about trust and institutions or, or trust in

elected officials, considering just how much Congress has seemed to step back from its

own authority.

What do you think is the importance of this midterms and, you know, if you're someone

who's kind of skeptical and says, okay, Democrats win the House, but Donald Trump's going

to do whatever he wants to do, what is Speaker Pelosi's response to that?

Well let me just say, first of all, that Congress hasn't stepped back, the Republicans

in Congress have abdicated, have abolished, they have abolished the House of Representatives.

They have just given the President free reign, ascend it somewhat too, but they have little

different rules.

In the Constitution, the House of Representatives getting very big power.

You know Congress is Article 1 of the Constitution, but even within that, the House has the power

of the purse, starts in the House, declare war, issues like that that are fundamental to

the Constitution and the rest.

They've abdicated.

They've abdicated.

So when we have, and even now you're seeing some changes, we've got 17 votes on the

health care bill.

Some of those people are seeing that they've got to be more afraid of their constituents

than they are of Donald Trump.

If Democrats take back the House, you know, last time that you all have the House under

a Donald Trump presidency, there were those two impeachments.

Is that something you think if Democrats take back the House this November where you should

expect is likely going forward?

The only person responsible for the impeachment of Donald Trump, not once, but twice, is

Donald Trump.

He gave us no choice.

He gave us no choice.

He gave us no choice.

So I don't think we go out and start with saying we're going to impeach.

No, he gave us no choice.

We'll see what he does.

But winning is about the people.

It's not about him.

It's about the people meeting their kitchen table needs so that they have confidence and

we have to restore that.

And the best way to do that is to listen to the people.

And now, one of the reasons I'm excited about having so many women in Congress, when I

came to Congress, we made a decision that we were going to recruit and support and all

the rest.

And now we have, on the Democratic side, like 95, 96 Democratic women.

And we're going to have more.

And we're going to have more.

The Republicans moved up to about 30 when young women and women having families or women

in the workplace see somebody in there who has shared their experience, making decisions

or listening to them and understanding their challenges.

And women still have these challenges, then that's a good thing.

They feel confident because somebody who has experiences like theirs is making that

decision.

I wanted to ask a question from a Vox audience member.

They asked about the Save America Act.

Trump told House Republicans this week that this bill will quote, guarantee the midterms

and he won't sign any other legislation until it's done.

Democrats have called it voter suppression dressed up as patriotism.

Donald Trump is saying that the requirement of proof of citizenship is important and that

he doesn't understand why Democrats wouldn't support it.

Why wouldn't, why do you or do you not support the Save America?

Oh, absolutely, totally completely opposed it.

That's why.

The disgraceful insult to our founders who created this country as a democracy and the rest.

Some of the things that are in it would say that if you want to go register to vote, you

have to bring a passport to prove your citizenship.

How many people do you think carry around a passport?

Actually, the fact is, more Democrats do than Republicans, but they'll find that out.

Secondly, okay, so I'm Nancy Dela Sandro Pelosi.

If I go to vote, if I go to vote and I say I'm Nancy Pelosi, no, you weren't born that

way in terms of going to register to vote, you got to go get your birth certificate.

It's hard for seniors, it's hard for people in rural areas.

He wants it to say that you can't vote by mail, really?

You can't vote by mail.

That's how our military votes overseas.

I tell many seniors or people with disabilities voted, many people vote by mail, but he hasn't

gotten that in the bill yet.

We are told that the Senate is not going to pass it, but he is saying, I won't sign any

other bills unless I get that.

Now there's a long list of things that are objectionable in the so-called Save Act that

are so wrong.

It's almost criminal and what it does to take away the right to vote of people.

Speaking of the current president, you've said that Donald Trump is a, quote, vile creature,

but you said that was a euphemism for what you really wanted to say.

This is South by Southwest.

I was going to let you end on this note.

Do you want to tell us how you really feel?

Well I do believe that if you're president of the United States, you have a certain responsibility

to live up to honoring the vision of our founders.

And of course, you're tearing apart everything that they are about to make a democracy, as

I said before, independent judiciary, free and fair elections, freedom of the press, rule

of law, do process the beauty of the Constitution.

The exquisite beauty of the Constitution is the separation of power.

In one of the honor they did everything of the Constitution to make sure we didn't have

one.

So he's smashed all of that A. B, one of my big issues coming to Congress was saving

the planet.

Forget about it.

They have his pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

And so we're taking so many steps away from clean air, clean water, but you have to honor

the vision of our founders.

Be grateful for the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform who have fought for our

freedom and other freedom in the world and not call them losers when you're at a cemetery

for a deceased soldier, honor that, and then of course the aspirations of our children.

Forget about that as far as he is concerned.

He is what he is.

We're going to win in November.

You're going to see a big change in how the separation of powers works, not how it is

abdicated to the president.

And of course there's a big issue of corruption in this administration as well.

But look, see how Kim Jeffries is saying the Democrats because it's about kitchen table

needs.

It's about honoring the vision of our founders.

It's about ending corruption in this government and that's what I think of him.

We'll end on a lightning quick answer.

If you could think about your career beyond the policy legislation, beyond the tangible

impact you've made on many folks lies, what makes you most proud?

What makes me most proud is that when I say we went from 12 to 96 to 95 women in Congress,

not just that, but just the complete reaching out and involving many more people in the

process, telling them, you can do this.

There's nobody like you in the history of the world, like you.

You're special, however you were raised, however you were educated, whatever environment

you enjoyed playing in stuff when you grew up.

And so I say to everybody, know with your power of this, whether it's in the political

and governmental arena or show business and communication and wherever it is, know that

you are authenticity of you.

And that has been sort of my mission of how we do just be ready.

Know your why, know what you care about and how you attract people to a strategic and

near-thinking, and the fun part of me is always to be with the people who may possibly

want to participate.

But it is what the greatness of America is.

It's what our founders had in mind.

Now I'll just close with this.

I'm from Baltimore, as you mentioned, and I grew up in Little Italy in Baltimore and

right near where we lived was the Port Baltimore, and that's where the National Anthem was

written.

Francis Scott, he wrote the National Anthem.

And so when you're at a game or something, you hear people cheer when we get to the end

of the National Anthem, I cheer before them.

I cheer when it says, proof through the night that our flag was still there.

We're in the night right now.

And we have to prove by our involvement that the flag is still there as it says in our

Anthem, and as we say in our pledge with liberty and justice for all, it's all out

there for us.

We just have to want to participate and demand, be impatient with, you know, if you say

people don't like it, be impatient.

So again, know your power, be ready, let's win, baby.

Thank you so much.

That was former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

This episode was produced by Jesse Ash.

It was edited by today's playing executive producer, Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by

Andrea Lopez Cruzado and mixed by Shannon Mahoney.

As always, thanks to supervising engineer David Tadashore and Christina Vales, our head

of video.

Every Saturday will be in your video and audio feeds with an interesting interview and

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You can also watch the Saturday interviews this week and every week on the Vox YouTube

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