[[COLD OPEN]]
ON PLUGGED IN …
A TRAIL BLAZER …
IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
NANCY PELOSI …
KEEPS MAKING HISTORY …
AS SPEAKER …
OF THE HOUSE …
OF REPRESENTATIVES.
[[BIDEN FROM 4/28: :53 seconds “Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President (applause)… no president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words-and it’s about time.” ]]
PELOSI’S JOURNEY …
FROM DAUGHTER …
OF A CONGRESSMAN …
TO BEING THE FIRST …
AND SO FAR, ONLY WOMAN …
TO BE HOUSE SPEAKER.
[[SUSAN PAGE SOT: 0:00:54 “she is the center of power in the House. And for the past several years, she has been the face of the Democratic opposition to President Trump, now the chief ally to President Biden.” Outcue Time Code 0:01:03 ]]
BIOGRAPHER SUSAN PAGE...
EXPLAINS NANCY PELOSI’S …
TREMENDOUS IMPACT …
ON AMERICAN POLITICS.
ON PLUGGED IN …
MADAM SPEAKER.
[[STOP]]
[[WELCOME/LEAD TO GYPSON]]
HELLO AND WELCOME...
TO PLUGGED IN.
I’M GRETA VAN SUSTEREN …
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON, DC.
THE HISTORIC ELECTION …
OF THE FIRST FEMALE …
VICE PRESIDENT …
OF THE UNITED STATES …
PROVIDED A FIRST-OF-ITS KIND …
PHOTO OPPORTUNITY …
IN APRIL.
THAT WAS WHEN ...
VICE PRESIDENT …
KAMALA HARRIS …
SAT NEXT TO …
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE …
OF REPRESENTATIVES …
NANCY PELOSI …
AS PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN …
ADDRESSED A JOINT
SESSION OF CONGRESS.
ACKNOWLEDGING BOTH “MADAM SPEAKER …
AND “MADAM VICE PRESIDENT” …
BIDEN NOTED …
HE IS THE FIRST PRESIDENT …
TO SAY THOSE WORDS …
AND ADDED “IT’S ABOUT TIME.”
FOR NANCY PELOSI …
IT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME …
SHE HAS HELD …
THE SPEAKER’S GAVEL.
BUT SHE HAS SAID THIS WILL BE …
HER LAST TERM …
A SPEAKER.
IN A FEW MINUTES …
I WILL TALK …
TO THE AUTHOR …
OF A NEW BIOGRAPHY …
OF PELOSI.
FIRST, A PROFILE …
FROM VOA …
CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT …
KATHERINE GYPSON.
[[STOP]]
[[GYPSON PKG]]
((Narrator))
The first woman to serve as Speaker of the US House of Representatives….
((Open for nats of applause))
((Narrator))
….Californian Nancy Pelosi has had a storied 34-year career on Capitol Hill – that includes being elected by her peers to the top leadership spot in the “People’s House” in both 2007 and 2019.
((Lara Brown, George Washington University))
((Mandatory skype courtesy))
“What makes her powerful is that her caucus members see her as being a savvy, strategic, discerning leader, who can look at the public and the Congress and find a way to move policy and issues forward.”
((Narrator))
Born Nancy D’Alesandro – the daughter of a Democratic Congressman from Maryland - she was familiar with politics from an early age. After marrying Paul Pelosi and raising five children, she won a special House election to represent San Francisco – one of the most liberal districts in the United States.
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“It’s not what you have done – it’s what you can do.”
((Narrator))
During her first Speakership from 2007-2011, Pelosi held Democrats back from impeaching President George W. Bush for his decision to go to war in Iraq and presided over passage of President Obama’s landmark health insurance legislation, the Affordable Care Act.
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“Pass health insurance reform for all Americans – that is a right – not a privilege!”
((Narrator))
An international figure who regularly meets with world leaders…. Pelosi became even more prominent during her turn as Speaker during the Donald Trump presidency, finding ways to command the moment over Republicans.
((Lara Brown, George Washington University))
((Mandatory skype courtesy))
“Those last two years that he was in office, helped to kind of push back and keep back some of the Republicans’ greatest wishes and hopes, whether it was building a wall, or, you know, keep all immigrants out of the United States. So she was very instrumental in pushing him back and running circles around him strategically.”
((Narrator))
Pelosi also presided over an unprecedented two House votes to twice impeach Trump….
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“The President is what he is – he thinks he’s above the law.”
((Narrator))
…..First in 2019 and again in 2021, after she and other lawmakers were personally endangered during the January 6th riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol….
((Open for nats of rioting ))
((Narrator))
The now 81-year-old Pelosi has promised not to seek another term as Speaker beyond 2023 -- as she prepares to hand over control of House Democrats to a new generation.
((Katherine Gypson, VOA News, Washington))
[[LEAD TO PAGE INTERVIEW PART 1]]
SUSAN PAGE …
IS THE WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF …
FOR USA TODAY …
AND SPENT THE PAST ...
TWO YEARS …
TALKING TO SPEAKER PELOSI ...
FOR A NEW BIOGRAPHY.
[GFX FS]
“MADAM SPEAKER:
NANCY PELOSI …
AND THE LESSONS OF POWER.”
WAS RELEASED IN APRIL.
IT COVERS HER LIFE …
FROM BEING THE DAUGHTER …
OF A BIG CITY MAYOR …
TO HER RELATIONSHIP …
WITH AMERICAN PRESIDENTS …
AND THE JANUARY 6TH …
ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL.
[[ON CAM]]
FIRST ...
WE TALKED ABOUT …
PELOSI’S ROLE ...
AS THE FIRST WOMAN…
IN SENIOR LEADERSHIP.
[[SOT/PAGE INTERVIEW]]
GVS: Susan, you had a blockbuster book about the former first lady Barbara Bush. You've now got another blockbuster about the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. So tell me for, our viewers what is the job of speaker of the House? Why is it so important?
SP: You know it's the first it's part of Article one in our Constitution, the very beginning. The Speaker of the House is mentioned before the President of the United States in our Constitution. But the Constitution, the founding fathers, does not really explain what a Speaker of the House is supposed to do. Over the years, over history, different speakers have handled the job in different ways. For Nancy Pelosi, our current speaker of the House, she is the center of power in the House. And for the past several years, she has been the face of the Democratic opposition to President Trump, now the chief ally to President Biden.
GVS: How do you describe or quantify her power, influence as speaker?
SP: So we know that she's powerful because when she wants to get something passed, she's gotten it passed. That would include the Affordable Care Act During the Obama administration, there were many advocates of that law that thought it could not get through the house, it was just going to be too hard. She got it through and you can also see her power by her ability to stop things that she doesn't want to get done done, and that was something that I think President Trump discovered.
GVS: You quote her in your book as describing her own job as being a weaver, why a weaver?
SP: Well, because she needs to hold together the Democratic caucus. You know, the Democratic Party is a pretty diverse group. It has very liberal members who call themselves democratic socialists. It has very centrist members moderates who represent districts that include a lot of Republicans. And they have different views on what the Democratic Party ought to do. She sees her role, in part, as we bring together all those strands to hold them together to get things done.
GVS: You know, we would never have had a woman president. A lot of nations around the world have, the us has not yet. She was the, she is and she is the first woman speaker of the House. And that must have some sort of bearing on her strength and power.
SP: Yes. I mean she was the first woman in the senior leadership for either party, in either the House or the Senate, the first leader for her party in Congress, and then the first speaker of the House. And you know there's something else that she's done that is rare in American history. She was elected to the leadership when Democrats were the minority, served as speaker when they gained the majority, kept her position when they fell back in the minority, held on to it again when they came back in the majority. In American history no one has done that in a very long time. Not since Sam Rayburn, who was Speaker of the House the legendary speaker of the House decades and decades ago.
GVS: What I also found unusual in reading your book is to take sort of a step back and look at it, is she she's an older woman now and she came to politics, elected office late. But if you go back in your book is that politics has been in her DNA since the day she was born. So tell me about that.
SP: She is a member of American political royalty. She was born in 1940 to parents in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father at that time was a member of Congress from Baltimore. When she was seven years old he was elected to the first of three terms as Mayor of Baltimore. And this was a time when big city mayors were often larger than life figures. They were important in national politics. They could be kingmakers for presidents. So her dad who is known as Tommy the elder D'Allesandro was someone who was close to Franklin Roosevelt. He in fact named his second son Franklin Delano Roosevelt D'Alesandro which is kind of a mouthful, was an ally of Harry Truman. In the book there's a picture of a young Nancy D'Alesandro standing with John F. Kennedy. This was when Nancy D'Alesandro was in high school and John F. Kennedy was a US senator. So she was very accustomed to the life of politics, although at that time neither she nor her parents or anyone else thought of her as a candidate for office because there were just so few women in elective office at that time.
GVS: you know, I obviously covered her over the years. And I thought that I knew so much about her and then reading your book, I discovered how little I knew, because there was so much more in there than I'd ever known. But one of the things that's particularly fascinating to me is when you talked about her family, her mother and how her mother was was unique and at a time when women were not that, did not have jobs necessarily in the US other than being homemakers and mothers.
SP: Her mother was a really remarkable figure, important in shaping Nancy D'Alessandro‘s attitudes toward what was possible how to behave.
It contributed to her toughness and her ambition. Her mother, as you say was, came to adulthood at a time when expectations of opportunities for women were pretty low. But she worked as an auctioneer. She tried to go to law school, she was an inventor, she invented a machine to give women facials. She filed patents for this machine. Actually last year, one of my kids found one of these old Nancy D'Alesandro beauty by vapor steam machines on eBay and bought it for me for my birthday. And I can tell you, Greta, I plugged it in and it still worked.
GVS: The outward appearance of Speaker Pelosi, at least to me, is that she's a little edgy a little rough around the edges, and I would not think of her as sort of warm, because she's tough. She's had to corral the House of Representatives. Is she, in person when you talk to her one-on-one, I’ve interviewed her about policy issues. But you spent a lot of time with her. Is she tough and rough around the edges or is she different?
SP: She's she's disciplined. I don't like that as an interviewer. Right. You want someone who's undisciplined They're always more interesting. She's pretty guarded about her personal life. She did talk more about her personal life the more times I interviewed her. but you know, she hasn't survived in the world of politics as long as she has without having a really tough skin. And she once described her job as getting up every day, eating nails for breakfast, putting on a suit of armor and going out to do political battle. That's a pretty tough image.
[GRETA OC]
THIRD IN LINE FOR THE...
PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES,
NANCY PELOSI’S TENURE AS...
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE...
IS HISTORIC IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
SHE BECAME THE...
FIRST WOMAN IN THE ROLE...
MORE THAN A DECADE AGO.
SHE JOINS OTHER...
HISTORY-MAKING WOMEN...
IN POSITIONS OF POWER.
VOA’S ARASH ARABASADI
(PRONO: UH-ROSH ARAB-UH-SAH-DEE)
TELLS US MORE.
[STOP]
((VAR WWII FOOTAGE, AP ARCHIVE))
((NARRATOR))
Khertek Anchimaa-Toka is generally recognized as the first female head of state in 1940 the small Asian nation of Tuva. She focused on bettering education for women and led her country into World War Two alongside the Allies and the neighboring Soviet Union. Tuva joined the USSR in 1944, and Anchimaa-Toka continued to serve in government until 1961.
((VAR, ICELAND IN 1980s, AP ARCHIVE))
((VAR, STILLS, FINNBOGADÓTTIR, REUTERS))
((NARRATOR))
Iceland made history in 1980 by electing the world’s first female president. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was re-elected three times, serving 16 years in office. She founded the Council of Women Leaders when she retired in 1996.
((GRFX-CFR Women Power Index))
The Council on Foreign Relations tracks women’s political power worldwide.
22 of 193 countries have a female head of state or government.
Just 13 countries have at least 50 percent representation by women in national cabinets.
And just three countries … Rwanda, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates … have 50-percent or more female representation in national legislatures.
((VAR, HILLARY))
((NARRATOR))
No American woman has come closer to the presidency than Hillary Clinton, losing to Donald Trump in 2016. Clinton served as Secretary of State in the Obama/Biden administration and was widely expected to win.
((VAR, PELOSI AT HOUSE, TBD)) (ought to close with shot of Harris & Pelosi from Biden’s address to Congress at the end of April))
((NARRATOR))
Once the most-powerful woman in Washington, Nancy Pelosi is now second to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News
[[GRETA]]
IN HER 33 YEARS…
ON CAPITOL HILL…
NANCY PELOSI…
HAS SERVED…
IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS…
FROM MINORITY WHIP…
TO HOUSE MINORITY LEADER...
AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.
SHE IS KNOWN…
AS A “DEAL MAKER” …
AND HAS BEEN…
REFERRED TO…
AS AN "IRON FIST…
IN A GUCCI GLOVE."
IN PART TWO OF...
MY CONVERSATION…
WITH SUSAN PAGE…
WE DISCUSSED…
THE CHALLENGES…
OF BRINGINGG THE…
MODERATE AND PROGRESSIVE
COALITIONS OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY TOGETHER.
[STOP]
GVS: in the book you describe her and you've you've interviewed a million people over the years as a tough interview
(00:09:27 - 00:10:27)
I mean you specifically describe her as that?
SP: Yeah that's right. Because because she says what she wants to say and it's hard to get her to say anything that she doesn't want to say. You know one of the best interviews I had, one of the most revealing interviews I had with her though, was when I would interview at a moment when she was in the middle of something and was all riled up, which happened you know, this was a pretty tumultuous time in American history when I was working on this book I was, went to interview her one day when she had just come out of one of her big disputes with the Squad with those progressive Democratic young members of Congress. And that was an interview in which she really displayed a temper about how they were behaving. So that was one of those interviews where you felt like you got something that was very real.
GVS: I also thought that she sort of snapped at you, I think is my recollection right is that she said, let's do the interview. What about the book or something like that? There was something about that I thought I thought I remembered.
(00:10:27 - 00:11:32)
SP: Yes that's right. So I'd been asking her about the dispute with the squad. And she said, she clearly didn't want to, she was insisting reporters were hyping this controversy although I didn't think that was true. And I asked maybe one question too many about it And she said, I thought you were here to talk about the book.’ but of course, I was there to talk about the book. This was exactly what I wanted to talk about with the book. And then she went on to have this more candid exchange. Not unusual. You've interviewed a million people yourself. Sometimes it takes a little work to get somebody to say what they really think.
GVS: A former Speaker of the House told me, described to me his job a little differently. He said it was like having a barrel full of frogs. and then he'd go across the Capitol and keep all his frogs, meaning his party, inside without having to jump ship, you know, trying to keep a lot of people happy so they get legislation passed. She has feuded with with the squad the the far left in her party hasn't she?
SP: Yes she has. And and one of our colleagues, John Bresnahan, who was then working for Politico a decade ago, described Nancy Pelosi as an iron fist in a Gucci glove, an iron fist in a Gucci glove. I think that is just about the best description of her I've ever heard because she can be persuasive. She can motivate members because she understands what's important to them, but she can have an iron fist when she wants to. and there have been times with AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez the congresswoman from New York and other progressives in the squad where she has shown both the fist and the glove.
GVS: You would get such a sense of force when you see her walk through the US Capitol. You know, she's so determined and you get a sense that she knows what she wants to get done.
SP She wears these four inch stilettos. I could no more walk in those shoes, much less in the marble halls of Congress to save my life. And they have become a real signature of her. You know, I think they make her look a little taller. She's five foot five. She's not very tall. and it makes her look a little fiercer and man you can hear her coming down the halls of Congress.
GVS: Can Speaker Pelosi negotiate? Can she give a little bit or was she like straight down the line? This is the way we're going to do it. This is what I'm going to do. or I mean, or is she willing to work with the other side of the aisle?
SP: She's definitely willing to take half a loaf. And this is one of the things that has brought complaints from some of the Democrats who are most liberal, her willingness to compromise to get something rather than nothing. Now she will go for the big prize, as she did with the Affordable Care Act. But when she needs to make a compromise, she does so. And she is you know, she is characterized here as a, by her critics as a San Francisco liberal, which means somebody who's really ideological and unbending. and she is definitely a liberal from San Francisco, but she is also a Baltimore Paul, and that would be somebody with a political pragmatism that was forged in her youth.
GVS: Do you get a sense that she that she's really serious about being a legislator or is it about winning? because there are two different types of people in Washington, those who who have deep convictions about things and some who just want to win.
SP: know she wants to win. But she definitely has a North Star. She has things that she cares about very much and have been completely consistent with throughout her career. In fact, I saw a TV interview from KQED which is a station in San Francisco, from the first time she was running for re-election in San Francisco and she was talking about the issues that matter to her, and it was a tape that you could have played yesterday and it would still be reflecting the priorities of Nancy Pelosi.
[[GRETA]]
IN PART THREE ...
OF MY INTERVIEW …
WITH SUSAN PAGE …
SHE CONCLUDES...
WITH SPEAKER PELOSI’S…
ASSESSMENT OF THE
CURRENT STATE OF AMERICAN POLITICS.
THEY DISCUSSED THE 2016...
U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,
THE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS…
OF FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP…
AND THE ATTACK…
AT THE U.S. CAPITOL…
ON JANUARY 6TH.
[[STOP]]
GVS: It was very public what Speaker Pelosi's relationship with was with former President Trump who was the opposing party, he's a Republican she's a Democrat. Was there anything, any insight that you learned because those two didn't seem to get along. They would, it seemed like they would go into the Oval Office perhaps have an argument. And then I remember one time they both came out and said they're praying for the other. And I didn't think that was a particularly good sign.
SP: You know, real contrast in their early attitudes toward one another. Because Pelosi told me that on election night 2016, when Donald Trump was first was elected to the White House, she had assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win that election, as did many other people. And it was like the kick of a mule to have Donald Trump win.
So you can tell that she was not happy about that. But I interviewed Donald Trump for USA Today in 2018 just before the midterm elections, and he continued to have this attitude that Nancy Pelosi was a dealmaker like him and that they could actually work together. He did not express a lot of alarm in this interview about what would happen to him if Democrats won the House, which of course happened. And that of course led to his impeachment twice.
GVS: But but she was opposed to the impeachment, at least in the beginning and then I thought she sort of gave in to sort of the pressure within her own party. I mean, what was her transition on the impeachment? Was she in the in favor favor in favor of it?
SP: She was suspicious about impeachment. She thought that impeachment was constitutionally fraught and also politically fraught. So she definitely held back efforts by members of many Democrats in Congress who wanted to impeach president Trump. Once this letter, once this conversation, phone conversation came out between President Trump and the leader of Ukraine, it just really opened the floodgates for those who wanted to impeach President Trump. and even moderate Democrats, Democrats from swing districts began to support the idea. At that point, she went ahead with impeachment. She was never enthusiastic about it. She told, I think more strongly that impeachment was warranted the second time around,
(00:20:00 - 00:21:00)
that happened after that January six assault on the US Capitol.
GVS: Did you get a chance to talk to her about that for your book or was your book already to bed by the time of the January six event?
SP: So my publisher let me add a little bit about the January six event. Even though my deadline was over. but I did talk with her about it in an interview two weeks ago and interview for USA Today not for the book, and she said it was so interesting. She said that when security came, she was presiding over the House of Representatives at the time the capitol was being stormed.
She said her security agents came up and said you have to leave. And she wasn't aware about the seriousness of the security threat that was going on. So she was so convinced that she was going to leave briefly and come right back that she left her phone up there. because she thought, I'll be right back I don't need to take my phone. Well of course that didn't happen. They hurried her to a secure location with other leaders of Congress where they watched on TV this extraordinary scene of the mob
(00:21:01 - 00:21:45)
breaking into the US Capitol, we saw them break into her office suite the speaker suite, terrorize her staff members. There's that famous picture of one of the members of the mob sitting at her desk with his boot on top of her desk. He left an obscene message for her in a notation on her desk. And I asked her in this interview, if if this mob had caught you, would they have killed you? And she said, yes, that was what they were setting out to do. And then she said, but they would have had a battle on their hands because I'm a street fighter. And she lifted up her foot and pointed at her four inch stilettos and said, besides I could have used these as weapons...that’s pretty fearless.
GVS: the president that we have now President Biden is also a Democrat which she's a Democrat. Does she have a strong relationship with him or a chilly one? How would you describe that?
SP: You know I think that this is the president with whom Nancy Pelosi is closest to. of course worked very closely with Barack Obama. She was speaker during his tenure as well. But Joe Biden is a Paul like she is. He's a guy who has spent all those years, thirty six years as a US senator on Capitol Hill.
(00:18:00 - 00:18:56) She told me that they know each other so well that they can speak in shorthand. and in an interview I did with her two weeks ago, she called him a transformative president and said that he had proposed a much bigger agenda than she thought he might. And it was one that she liked very much.
GVS: who is she closest to in Congress, who is likely, which other member of Congress is likely to hang around her office if any?
SP: Well Anna Eshoo from California is one of her best friends and was one of the best interviews I did because she really knows Nancy Pelosi well. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut is another member who's very close to her. She's also close to Adam Schiff, who is of course also from California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
GVS: Did she want a book written about her?
SP: So that's such a good question. I didn't have any deal with her beforehand before I signed the contract for the book because I didn't want her to feel that she had some sway over the book, although I did hope that she would cooperate. She, at the end of the day I had 10 interviews with her over two years, I thought that was actually quite a few for someone as busy as the Speaker of the House. She did not discourage other people from talking to me, which as you know some public officials will do when they don't want an article or a book written.
(00:11:33 - 00:12:33)
So she was at least open to the book. You know I think she's in her valedictory term. I think she is unlikely to run for another term as Speaker and perhaps even as a member of Congress. So maybe she feels this is an appropriate time to have people take a look at her record.
Well anyway, we look forward to it's a great book a great read. And even if you know a lot about Speaker Pelosi or you think you do, there's so much more in the book that I found it I found it fascinating. So thank you very much for writing it.
SP: Hey Greta thank you very much.
[[GOODBYE]]
THAT’S ALL THE TIME …
WE HAVE FOR NOW.
THANKS TO MY GUEST …
BIOGRAPHER ...
AND USA TODAY …
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF…
SUSAN PAGE.
STAY UP TO DATE …
ON THE LATEST NEWS …
AT VOANEWS.COM.
AND FOLLOW ME …
ON TWITTER …
AT GRETA.
THANK YOU FOR BEING …
PLUGGED IN.
[[STOP]]
ON PLUGGED IN …
A TRAIL BLAZER …
IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
NANCY PELOSI …
KEEPS MAKING HISTORY …
AS SPEAKER …
OF THE HOUSE …
OF REPRESENTATIVES.
[[BIDEN FROM 4/28: :53 seconds “Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President (applause)… no president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words-and it’s about time.” ]]
PELOSI’S JOURNEY …
FROM DAUGHTER …
OF A CONGRESSMAN …
TO BEING THE FIRST …
AND SO FAR, ONLY WOMAN …
TO BE HOUSE SPEAKER.
[[SUSAN PAGE SOT: 0:00:54 “she is the center of power in the House. And for the past several years, she has been the face of the Democratic opposition to President Trump, now the chief ally to President Biden.” Outcue Time Code 0:01:03 ]]
BIOGRAPHER SUSAN PAGE...
EXPLAINS NANCY PELOSI’S …
TREMENDOUS IMPACT …
ON AMERICAN POLITICS.
ON PLUGGED IN …
MADAM SPEAKER.
[[STOP]]
[[WELCOME/LEAD TO GYPSON]]
HELLO AND WELCOME...
TO PLUGGED IN.
I’M GRETA VAN SUSTEREN …
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON, DC.
THE HISTORIC ELECTION …
OF THE FIRST FEMALE …
VICE PRESIDENT …
OF THE UNITED STATES …
PROVIDED A FIRST-OF-ITS KIND …
PHOTO OPPORTUNITY …
IN APRIL.
THAT WAS WHEN ...
VICE PRESIDENT …
KAMALA HARRIS …
SAT NEXT TO …
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE …
OF REPRESENTATIVES …
NANCY PELOSI …
AS PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN …
ADDRESSED A JOINT
SESSION OF CONGRESS.
ACKNOWLEDGING BOTH “MADAM SPEAKER …
AND “MADAM VICE PRESIDENT” …
BIDEN NOTED …
HE IS THE FIRST PRESIDENT …
TO SAY THOSE WORDS …
AND ADDED “IT’S ABOUT TIME.”
FOR NANCY PELOSI …
IT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME …
SHE HAS HELD …
THE SPEAKER’S GAVEL.
BUT SHE HAS SAID THIS WILL BE …
HER LAST TERM …
A SPEAKER.
IN A FEW MINUTES …
I WILL TALK …
TO THE AUTHOR …
OF A NEW BIOGRAPHY …
OF PELOSI.
FIRST, A PROFILE …
FROM VOA …
CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT …
KATHERINE GYPSON.
[[STOP]]
[[GYPSON PKG]]
((Narrator))
The first woman to serve as Speaker of the US House of Representatives….
((Open for nats of applause))
((Narrator))
….Californian Nancy Pelosi has had a storied 34-year career on Capitol Hill – that includes being elected by her peers to the top leadership spot in the “People’s House” in both 2007 and 2019.
((Lara Brown, George Washington University))
((Mandatory skype courtesy))
“What makes her powerful is that her caucus members see her as being a savvy, strategic, discerning leader, who can look at the public and the Congress and find a way to move policy and issues forward.”
((Narrator))
Born Nancy D’Alesandro – the daughter of a Democratic Congressman from Maryland - she was familiar with politics from an early age. After marrying Paul Pelosi and raising five children, she won a special House election to represent San Francisco – one of the most liberal districts in the United States.
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“It’s not what you have done – it’s what you can do.”
((Narrator))
During her first Speakership from 2007-2011, Pelosi held Democrats back from impeaching President George W. Bush for his decision to go to war in Iraq and presided over passage of President Obama’s landmark health insurance legislation, the Affordable Care Act.
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“Pass health insurance reform for all Americans – that is a right – not a privilege!”
((Narrator))
An international figure who regularly meets with world leaders…. Pelosi became even more prominent during her turn as Speaker during the Donald Trump presidency, finding ways to command the moment over Republicans.
((Lara Brown, George Washington University))
((Mandatory skype courtesy))
“Those last two years that he was in office, helped to kind of push back and keep back some of the Republicans’ greatest wishes and hopes, whether it was building a wall, or, you know, keep all immigrants out of the United States. So she was very instrumental in pushing him back and running circles around him strategically.”
((Narrator))
Pelosi also presided over an unprecedented two House votes to twice impeach Trump….
((Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House))
“The President is what he is – he thinks he’s above the law.”
((Narrator))
…..First in 2019 and again in 2021, after she and other lawmakers were personally endangered during the January 6th riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol….
((Open for nats of rioting ))
((Narrator))
The now 81-year-old Pelosi has promised not to seek another term as Speaker beyond 2023 -- as she prepares to hand over control of House Democrats to a new generation.
((Katherine Gypson, VOA News, Washington))
[[LEAD TO PAGE INTERVIEW PART 1]]
SUSAN PAGE …
IS THE WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF …
FOR USA TODAY …
AND SPENT THE PAST ...
TWO YEARS …
TALKING TO SPEAKER PELOSI ...
FOR A NEW BIOGRAPHY.
[GFX FS]
“MADAM SPEAKER:
NANCY PELOSI …
AND THE LESSONS OF POWER.”
WAS RELEASED IN APRIL.
IT COVERS HER LIFE …
FROM BEING THE DAUGHTER …
OF A BIG CITY MAYOR …
TO HER RELATIONSHIP …
WITH AMERICAN PRESIDENTS …
AND THE JANUARY 6TH …
ATTACK ON THE U.S. CAPITOL.
[[ON CAM]]
FIRST ...
WE TALKED ABOUT …
PELOSI’S ROLE ...
AS THE FIRST WOMAN…
IN SENIOR LEADERSHIP.
[[SOT/PAGE INTERVIEW]]
GVS: Susan, you had a blockbuster book about the former first lady Barbara Bush. You've now got another blockbuster about the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. So tell me for, our viewers what is the job of speaker of the House? Why is it so important?
SP: You know it's the first it's part of Article one in our Constitution, the very beginning. The Speaker of the House is mentioned before the President of the United States in our Constitution. But the Constitution, the founding fathers, does not really explain what a Speaker of the House is supposed to do. Over the years, over history, different speakers have handled the job in different ways. For Nancy Pelosi, our current speaker of the House, she is the center of power in the House. And for the past several years, she has been the face of the Democratic opposition to President Trump, now the chief ally to President Biden.
GVS: How do you describe or quantify her power, influence as speaker?
SP: So we know that she's powerful because when she wants to get something passed, she's gotten it passed. That would include the Affordable Care Act During the Obama administration, there were many advocates of that law that thought it could not get through the house, it was just going to be too hard. She got it through and you can also see her power by her ability to stop things that she doesn't want to get done done, and that was something that I think President Trump discovered.
GVS: You quote her in your book as describing her own job as being a weaver, why a weaver?
SP: Well, because she needs to hold together the Democratic caucus. You know, the Democratic Party is a pretty diverse group. It has very liberal members who call themselves democratic socialists. It has very centrist members moderates who represent districts that include a lot of Republicans. And they have different views on what the Democratic Party ought to do. She sees her role, in part, as we bring together all those strands to hold them together to get things done.
GVS: You know, we would never have had a woman president. A lot of nations around the world have, the us has not yet. She was the, she is and she is the first woman speaker of the House. And that must have some sort of bearing on her strength and power.
SP: Yes. I mean she was the first woman in the senior leadership for either party, in either the House or the Senate, the first leader for her party in Congress, and then the first speaker of the House. And you know there's something else that she's done that is rare in American history. She was elected to the leadership when Democrats were the minority, served as speaker when they gained the majority, kept her position when they fell back in the minority, held on to it again when they came back in the majority. In American history no one has done that in a very long time. Not since Sam Rayburn, who was Speaker of the House the legendary speaker of the House decades and decades ago.
GVS: What I also found unusual in reading your book is to take sort of a step back and look at it, is she she's an older woman now and she came to politics, elected office late. But if you go back in your book is that politics has been in her DNA since the day she was born. So tell me about that.
SP: She is a member of American political royalty. She was born in 1940 to parents in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father at that time was a member of Congress from Baltimore. When she was seven years old he was elected to the first of three terms as Mayor of Baltimore. And this was a time when big city mayors were often larger than life figures. They were important in national politics. They could be kingmakers for presidents. So her dad who is known as Tommy the elder D'Allesandro was someone who was close to Franklin Roosevelt. He in fact named his second son Franklin Delano Roosevelt D'Alesandro which is kind of a mouthful, was an ally of Harry Truman. In the book there's a picture of a young Nancy D'Alesandro standing with John F. Kennedy. This was when Nancy D'Alesandro was in high school and John F. Kennedy was a US senator. So she was very accustomed to the life of politics, although at that time neither she nor her parents or anyone else thought of her as a candidate for office because there were just so few women in elective office at that time.
GVS: you know, I obviously covered her over the years. And I thought that I knew so much about her and then reading your book, I discovered how little I knew, because there was so much more in there than I'd ever known. But one of the things that's particularly fascinating to me is when you talked about her family, her mother and how her mother was was unique and at a time when women were not that, did not have jobs necessarily in the US other than being homemakers and mothers.
SP: Her mother was a really remarkable figure, important in shaping Nancy D'Alessandro‘s attitudes toward what was possible how to behave.
It contributed to her toughness and her ambition. Her mother, as you say was, came to adulthood at a time when expectations of opportunities for women were pretty low. But she worked as an auctioneer. She tried to go to law school, she was an inventor, she invented a machine to give women facials. She filed patents for this machine. Actually last year, one of my kids found one of these old Nancy D'Alesandro beauty by vapor steam machines on eBay and bought it for me for my birthday. And I can tell you, Greta, I plugged it in and it still worked.
GVS: The outward appearance of Speaker Pelosi, at least to me, is that she's a little edgy a little rough around the edges, and I would not think of her as sort of warm, because she's tough. She's had to corral the House of Representatives. Is she, in person when you talk to her one-on-one, I’ve interviewed her about policy issues. But you spent a lot of time with her. Is she tough and rough around the edges or is she different?
SP: She's she's disciplined. I don't like that as an interviewer. Right. You want someone who's undisciplined They're always more interesting. She's pretty guarded about her personal life. She did talk more about her personal life the more times I interviewed her. but you know, she hasn't survived in the world of politics as long as she has without having a really tough skin. And she once described her job as getting up every day, eating nails for breakfast, putting on a suit of armor and going out to do political battle. That's a pretty tough image.
[GRETA OC]
THIRD IN LINE FOR THE...
PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES,
NANCY PELOSI’S TENURE AS...
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE...
IS HISTORIC IN AMERICAN POLITICS.
SHE BECAME THE...
FIRST WOMAN IN THE ROLE...
MORE THAN A DECADE AGO.
SHE JOINS OTHER...
HISTORY-MAKING WOMEN...
IN POSITIONS OF POWER.
VOA’S ARASH ARABASADI
(PRONO: UH-ROSH ARAB-UH-SAH-DEE)
TELLS US MORE.
[STOP]
((VAR WWII FOOTAGE, AP ARCHIVE))
((NARRATOR))
Khertek Anchimaa-Toka is generally recognized as the first female head of state in 1940 the small Asian nation of Tuva. She focused on bettering education for women and led her country into World War Two alongside the Allies and the neighboring Soviet Union. Tuva joined the USSR in 1944, and Anchimaa-Toka continued to serve in government until 1961.
((VAR, ICELAND IN 1980s, AP ARCHIVE))
((VAR, STILLS, FINNBOGADÓTTIR, REUTERS))
((NARRATOR))
Iceland made history in 1980 by electing the world’s first female president. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was re-elected three times, serving 16 years in office. She founded the Council of Women Leaders when she retired in 1996.
((GRFX-CFR Women Power Index))
The Council on Foreign Relations tracks women’s political power worldwide.
22 of 193 countries have a female head of state or government.
Just 13 countries have at least 50 percent representation by women in national cabinets.
And just three countries … Rwanda, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates … have 50-percent or more female representation in national legislatures.
((VAR, HILLARY))
((NARRATOR))
No American woman has come closer to the presidency than Hillary Clinton, losing to Donald Trump in 2016. Clinton served as Secretary of State in the Obama/Biden administration and was widely expected to win.
((VAR, PELOSI AT HOUSE, TBD)) (ought to close with shot of Harris & Pelosi from Biden’s address to Congress at the end of April))
((NARRATOR))
Once the most-powerful woman in Washington, Nancy Pelosi is now second to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Arash Arabasadi, VOA News
[[GRETA]]
IN HER 33 YEARS…
ON CAPITOL HILL…
NANCY PELOSI…
HAS SERVED…
IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS…
FROM MINORITY WHIP…
TO HOUSE MINORITY LEADER...
AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.
SHE IS KNOWN…
AS A “DEAL MAKER” …
AND HAS BEEN…
REFERRED TO…
AS AN "IRON FIST…
IN A GUCCI GLOVE."
IN PART TWO OF...
MY CONVERSATION…
WITH SUSAN PAGE…
WE DISCUSSED…
THE CHALLENGES…
OF BRINGINGG THE…
MODERATE AND PROGRESSIVE
COALITIONS OF THE
DEMOCRATIC PARTY TOGETHER.
[STOP]
GVS: in the book you describe her and you've you've interviewed a million people over the years as a tough interview
(00:09:27 - 00:10:27)
I mean you specifically describe her as that?
SP: Yeah that's right. Because because she says what she wants to say and it's hard to get her to say anything that she doesn't want to say. You know one of the best interviews I had, one of the most revealing interviews I had with her though, was when I would interview at a moment when she was in the middle of something and was all riled up, which happened you know, this was a pretty tumultuous time in American history when I was working on this book I was, went to interview her one day when she had just come out of one of her big disputes with the Squad with those progressive Democratic young members of Congress. And that was an interview in which she really displayed a temper about how they were behaving. So that was one of those interviews where you felt like you got something that was very real.
GVS: I also thought that she sort of snapped at you, I think is my recollection right is that she said, let's do the interview. What about the book or something like that? There was something about that I thought I thought I remembered.
(00:10:27 - 00:11:32)
SP: Yes that's right. So I'd been asking her about the dispute with the squad. And she said, she clearly didn't want to, she was insisting reporters were hyping this controversy although I didn't think that was true. And I asked maybe one question too many about it And she said, I thought you were here to talk about the book.’ but of course, I was there to talk about the book. This was exactly what I wanted to talk about with the book. And then she went on to have this more candid exchange. Not unusual. You've interviewed a million people yourself. Sometimes it takes a little work to get somebody to say what they really think.
GVS: A former Speaker of the House told me, described to me his job a little differently. He said it was like having a barrel full of frogs. and then he'd go across the Capitol and keep all his frogs, meaning his party, inside without having to jump ship, you know, trying to keep a lot of people happy so they get legislation passed. She has feuded with with the squad the the far left in her party hasn't she?
SP: Yes she has. And and one of our colleagues, John Bresnahan, who was then working for Politico a decade ago, described Nancy Pelosi as an iron fist in a Gucci glove, an iron fist in a Gucci glove. I think that is just about the best description of her I've ever heard because she can be persuasive. She can motivate members because she understands what's important to them, but she can have an iron fist when she wants to. and there have been times with AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez the congresswoman from New York and other progressives in the squad where she has shown both the fist and the glove.
GVS: You would get such a sense of force when you see her walk through the US Capitol. You know, she's so determined and you get a sense that she knows what she wants to get done.
SP She wears these four inch stilettos. I could no more walk in those shoes, much less in the marble halls of Congress to save my life. And they have become a real signature of her. You know, I think they make her look a little taller. She's five foot five. She's not very tall. and it makes her look a little fiercer and man you can hear her coming down the halls of Congress.
GVS: Can Speaker Pelosi negotiate? Can she give a little bit or was she like straight down the line? This is the way we're going to do it. This is what I'm going to do. or I mean, or is she willing to work with the other side of the aisle?
SP: She's definitely willing to take half a loaf. And this is one of the things that has brought complaints from some of the Democrats who are most liberal, her willingness to compromise to get something rather than nothing. Now she will go for the big prize, as she did with the Affordable Care Act. But when she needs to make a compromise, she does so. And she is you know, she is characterized here as a, by her critics as a San Francisco liberal, which means somebody who's really ideological and unbending. and she is definitely a liberal from San Francisco, but she is also a Baltimore Paul, and that would be somebody with a political pragmatism that was forged in her youth.
GVS: Do you get a sense that she that she's really serious about being a legislator or is it about winning? because there are two different types of people in Washington, those who who have deep convictions about things and some who just want to win.
SP: know she wants to win. But she definitely has a North Star. She has things that she cares about very much and have been completely consistent with throughout her career. In fact, I saw a TV interview from KQED which is a station in San Francisco, from the first time she was running for re-election in San Francisco and she was talking about the issues that matter to her, and it was a tape that you could have played yesterday and it would still be reflecting the priorities of Nancy Pelosi.
[[GRETA]]
IN PART THREE ...
OF MY INTERVIEW …
WITH SUSAN PAGE …
SHE CONCLUDES...
WITH SPEAKER PELOSI’S…
ASSESSMENT OF THE
CURRENT STATE OF AMERICAN POLITICS.
THEY DISCUSSED THE 2016...
U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,
THE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS…
OF FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP…
AND THE ATTACK…
AT THE U.S. CAPITOL…
ON JANUARY 6TH.
[[STOP]]
GVS: It was very public what Speaker Pelosi's relationship with was with former President Trump who was the opposing party, he's a Republican she's a Democrat. Was there anything, any insight that you learned because those two didn't seem to get along. They would, it seemed like they would go into the Oval Office perhaps have an argument. And then I remember one time they both came out and said they're praying for the other. And I didn't think that was a particularly good sign.
SP: You know, real contrast in their early attitudes toward one another. Because Pelosi told me that on election night 2016, when Donald Trump was first was elected to the White House, she had assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win that election, as did many other people. And it was like the kick of a mule to have Donald Trump win.
So you can tell that she was not happy about that. But I interviewed Donald Trump for USA Today in 2018 just before the midterm elections, and he continued to have this attitude that Nancy Pelosi was a dealmaker like him and that they could actually work together. He did not express a lot of alarm in this interview about what would happen to him if Democrats won the House, which of course happened. And that of course led to his impeachment twice.
GVS: But but she was opposed to the impeachment, at least in the beginning and then I thought she sort of gave in to sort of the pressure within her own party. I mean, what was her transition on the impeachment? Was she in the in favor favor in favor of it?
SP: She was suspicious about impeachment. She thought that impeachment was constitutionally fraught and also politically fraught. So she definitely held back efforts by members of many Democrats in Congress who wanted to impeach president Trump. Once this letter, once this conversation, phone conversation came out between President Trump and the leader of Ukraine, it just really opened the floodgates for those who wanted to impeach President Trump. and even moderate Democrats, Democrats from swing districts began to support the idea. At that point, she went ahead with impeachment. She was never enthusiastic about it. She told, I think more strongly that impeachment was warranted the second time around,
(00:20:00 - 00:21:00)
that happened after that January six assault on the US Capitol.
GVS: Did you get a chance to talk to her about that for your book or was your book already to bed by the time of the January six event?
SP: So my publisher let me add a little bit about the January six event. Even though my deadline was over. but I did talk with her about it in an interview two weeks ago and interview for USA Today not for the book, and she said it was so interesting. She said that when security came, she was presiding over the House of Representatives at the time the capitol was being stormed.
She said her security agents came up and said you have to leave. And she wasn't aware about the seriousness of the security threat that was going on. So she was so convinced that she was going to leave briefly and come right back that she left her phone up there. because she thought, I'll be right back I don't need to take my phone. Well of course that didn't happen. They hurried her to a secure location with other leaders of Congress where they watched on TV this extraordinary scene of the mob
(00:21:01 - 00:21:45)
breaking into the US Capitol, we saw them break into her office suite the speaker suite, terrorize her staff members. There's that famous picture of one of the members of the mob sitting at her desk with his boot on top of her desk. He left an obscene message for her in a notation on her desk. And I asked her in this interview, if if this mob had caught you, would they have killed you? And she said, yes, that was what they were setting out to do. And then she said, but they would have had a battle on their hands because I'm a street fighter. And she lifted up her foot and pointed at her four inch stilettos and said, besides I could have used these as weapons...that’s pretty fearless.
GVS: the president that we have now President Biden is also a Democrat which she's a Democrat. Does she have a strong relationship with him or a chilly one? How would you describe that?
SP: You know I think that this is the president with whom Nancy Pelosi is closest to. of course worked very closely with Barack Obama. She was speaker during his tenure as well. But Joe Biden is a Paul like she is. He's a guy who has spent all those years, thirty six years as a US senator on Capitol Hill.
(00:18:00 - 00:18:56) She told me that they know each other so well that they can speak in shorthand. and in an interview I did with her two weeks ago, she called him a transformative president and said that he had proposed a much bigger agenda than she thought he might. And it was one that she liked very much.
GVS: who is she closest to in Congress, who is likely, which other member of Congress is likely to hang around her office if any?
SP: Well Anna Eshoo from California is one of her best friends and was one of the best interviews I did because she really knows Nancy Pelosi well. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut is another member who's very close to her. She's also close to Adam Schiff, who is of course also from California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
GVS: Did she want a book written about her?
SP: So that's such a good question. I didn't have any deal with her beforehand before I signed the contract for the book because I didn't want her to feel that she had some sway over the book, although I did hope that she would cooperate. She, at the end of the day I had 10 interviews with her over two years, I thought that was actually quite a few for someone as busy as the Speaker of the House. She did not discourage other people from talking to me, which as you know some public officials will do when they don't want an article or a book written.
(00:11:33 - 00:12:33)
So she was at least open to the book. You know I think she's in her valedictory term. I think she is unlikely to run for another term as Speaker and perhaps even as a member of Congress. So maybe she feels this is an appropriate time to have people take a look at her record.
Well anyway, we look forward to it's a great book a great read. And even if you know a lot about Speaker Pelosi or you think you do, there's so much more in the book that I found it I found it fascinating. So thank you very much for writing it.
SP: Hey Greta thank you very much.
[[GOODBYE]]
THAT’S ALL THE TIME …
WE HAVE FOR NOW.
THANKS TO MY GUEST …
BIOGRAPHER ...
AND USA TODAY …
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF…
SUSAN PAGE.
STAY UP TO DATE …
ON THE LATEST NEWS …
AT VOANEWS.COM.
AND FOLLOW ME …
ON TWITTER …
AT GRETA.
THANK YOU FOR BEING …
PLUGGED IN.
[[STOP]]
