ANancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, defeated Donald Trump in budget disputes, taunted him during the State of the Union address and won an outsized space in his brain. The self-proclaimed “very stable genius” derided her as “crazy Nancy” while she denounced him as a “psychopathic nutcase.” As a mother of five and grandmother of 10 grandchildren, she knew a thing or two about unruly children.
Hakeem Jeffries currently leads the Democrats in the House, but 84-year-old Pelosi still has influence. Just ask Joe Biden. Pelosi recently helped engineer his exit from the presidential race.
“I didn’t ask him to resign,” she said recently. “I asked for a campaign that could be victorious. And I didn’t see that on the horizon.”
The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Female Speaker of the House of Representatives is Pelosi’s second memoir. With help from Aaron Bennett, her speechwriter and communications director, and author Lyric Winik, she delivers a dryly written but insightful read.
Pelosi expresses her despair over the October 2022 attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, by David DePape, a far-right conspiracy theorist who echoed the chants of pro-Trump insurrectionists as he broke into Pelosi’s home.
“The same jeers and boos of ‘Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?’ that echoed through the hallowed halls of the Capitol on January 6 echoed through our family home less than two years later.”
As the daughter of a Baltimore mayor, Pelosi knows how to hold a political grudge. She recalls how Donald Trump Jr. mocked the attack: “On Twitter (now X), he shared a meme with a hammer and the slogan, ‘Done my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume.'”
Almost two years later, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and nearly killed him. The Trump era is marked by outbreaks of violence – a reality that Pelosi regrets.
She takes pains to describe her relationship with Republicans, calling the late Senator and presidential candidate John McCain a friend and recounting how he shared his opposition to repealing the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), a central goal of Republicans when Trump was in the White House.
“On the day of the Senate vote,” Pelosi begins, “McCain said, ‘Nancy, I … know what’s going on here.’ He also told me that under the circumstances he would vote no. I kept his comment secret from everyone.”
McCain died the following year.
Pelosi also recalls working with Ohio Republican Speaker John Boehner and George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary John Paulson to craft a bailout during the 2008 financial crisis. Pelosi’s relationship with the younger Bush was strained, but she thwarted Democrats’ efforts to impeach him over the Iraq war – a move Trump had supported.
Not surprisingly, Pelosi does not mention that before the crisis, she and Boehner ignored Paulson’s objections to expanding government guarantees for jumbo mortgages.
“At a meeting with Pelosi and Boehner, Pelosi told Paulson that they were going to raise the limits,” Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera reported in All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. “She said it in a way that suggested he couldn’t stop her. Then she laughed and showed him a note Boehner had slipped her. ‘Let’s get going, Hank,’ it said.”
Pelosi also targets other Republicans. “The House of Representatives under the leadership of Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich was not a healthy place for children and other living creatures.” Zing!
Pelosi also focuses on China-US relations and human rights, writing: “But, if I may say so immodestly, my knowledge of China is unmatched in Congress.”
She criticizes governments that have turned a blind eye to human rights abuses. She chides George HW Bush for giving China a free pass after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, but also criticizes Max Baucus, a former Democratic senator from Montana, for promoting a future China that never existed.
She quotes him sarcastically: “When most-favored-nation status is implemented, China will become the great, respected nation we all hoped for.” Later, Pelosi and Baucus would be forced to join forces to push through health care reform.
As for Trump, she shows his indifference to the plight of the Uighurs, China’s oppressed Muslim minority. She conveyed the concerns of both Democratic and Republican leaders to Trump and asked him to raise the issue with Xi Jinping.
“After the meeting, President Trump told me that when President Xi asked him about the Uighurs, he said, ‘These people like being in these camps.’ To which I replied, ‘That’s what authoritarians always say.'”
Trump is in love with strong men. Hell, he wants to be one himself. He has called for the US Constitution to be suspended and for him to become dictator for a day. He has bromances with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
He has also heaped praise on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who recently rigged an election. In an interview, Trump praised Maduro for his supposed law enforcement skills.
“If you look at Caracas, it was known as a very dangerous city, but now it’s very safe,” Trump said. “It’s safer than many of our cities.”
The Global Organized Crime Index shows that Venezuela has the highest crime rate in the world.
Back in Congress, Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, has been in office for 37 years. She has experienced a lot of history.
More than three years ago, on January 7, 2021, at 3:42 a.m., she was there when the rioters were exhausted and driven away, the formal challenges to the Electoral College results were concluded, and Joe Biden’s election victory was assured.
Pelosi said: “Those who have tried to distract us from our responsibility must say, ‘You have failed.'”
As we now know, Trump came back for seconds. On Election Day, we will know if Pelosi helped beat him back again.
