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madamspeaker · 6 months

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Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emeriti of the House of Representatives, has a famously packed schedule. By midday she’s already been on the House Floor, speaking in support of the bill to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest its US assets. Before that, a sizeable portion of her morning was consumed by meetings with House and Senate’s 97 military veterans – part of her battle to get Biden’s stalled funding package for Ukraine back on track. Then there’s an interview with veteran NBC host Andrea Mitchell, where she reinforces the case for providing aid to Ukraine alongside retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

Joining with the Ukrainian-born Purple Heart recipient and former national security council director for European Affairs to make the case is vintage Pelosi, who knows how to exploit political pressure points.

But at exactly one minute before the designated time slot for an interview with the Business Post, she strides down the corridor of the Longworth Building towards her corner office; a diminutive force of nature dressed in a fire-red pantsuit and stiletto heels.

She’s a strikingly attractive woman, with enormous dark eyes and an incandescent smile that belies the steely resolve that propelled her to the pinnacle of American politics, smashing glass en route.

Somewhere between her journey back from the House floor and our interview, she has exchanged the interlinked US and Ukraine flags that were pinned to her lapel with a one-inch square Irish flag.

As we enter her private office, she notices the spring blossoms that Washington DC is famous for at this time of year outside her window. “Look at that,” she beams, “they weren’t there yesterday.”

A consummate host, she invites me to sit where I can enjoy the view of the blossoms and the Capitol behind them.

Israel

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow a vote on the foreign aid package is deeply frustrating for Pelosi who knows the votes are there, on both sides of the aisle.

“How can this be the party of Ronald Reagan – ‘Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall’ - and they’re at a place that’s so far and so distant from that. It’s shocking,” she said.

“I'm rarely surprised at anything around here, but it is shocking to hear them speak in a pro-Putin way and that’s just a reflection of Donald Trump, there’s no question about that.”

Still, she is optimistic about passing the aid package: “There are other routes. They may take longer but we’ll get there.”

Her tenacity and willingness to apply pressure when persuasion fails has stood Ireland in good stead.

In particular, when it seemed as though it could unravel following the post-Brexit manoeuvrings towards a hard border – and the volatility introduced by Trump’s pro-Brexit stance.

“The strong bipartisan support in the House and the Senate for the Good Friday Accords enabled me to go to England and say to the parliamentarians there in different meetings; Don’t even listen to Trump when he says ‘if you get a bad deal in Brexit you’ll have a bilateral with the US.’,” she said.

“We told them ‘Forget that. It ain’t going to happen. You mess with the Good Friday Accords and the border issues and you ain’t got nothing,” Pelosi said, delivering the last line with relish.

Pelosi has been a stalwart supporter of Ireland since before the Good Friday Agreement, a tireless champion of its economic as well as its political interests.

Her affinity for Ireland is bolstered by family connections; her daughter Jacqueline’s husband Michael Kenneally. Their three children, Pelosi’s grandsons, were baptised in the church near the paternal family home in Kilquade, Co Wicklow.

Witnessing the joint address and standing ovation for First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly at the Ireland Funds Gala on Wednesday night provided her with another yardstick by which Northern Ireland’s transformation can be measured.

During their US visit, Northern Ireland’s new leaders urged the US to bring the same approach to pursuing a ceasefire in the Middle East as it did in Northern Ireland.

Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza is a vexed topic for Pelosi and she bristles at suggestions that Biden isn’t doing enough to help Palestinians – or that he needs to put more distance between himself and Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Well, I don’t think we ever gave our proxy to Netanyahu. I’ve had a problem with him for decades,” she said. “But our support for Israel as our ally in the region is strong. What happened on October 7 was barbaric. There has to be recognition that Hamas is a terrorist organisation. And if you had family members who were kidnapped or killed that day, you’d want some justice to be done. How that justice is done though, when it comes at the expense of civilian women and children, has to be calibrated in a different way.”

Pelosi continues: “I just really have a problem with everyone putting this at Joe Biden’s doorstep. This is at the doorstep of Netanyahu. This is at the doorstep of many of the Arab countries who never came to the aid of the Palestinians before.”

Trump

Meanwhile, there’s the overarching challenge of defeating Trump in November in what she agrees is the most consequential election in US history.

She runs through a long litany of Trump transgressions, concluding with a reference to former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly claim last week that Trump told him Hitler “had done some good things”.

“This is a very strange person,” she concludes. “I say he's having a limbo contest with himself to see how low he can go.”

Asked whether she fears for the future of US democracy she replies; “No, I don’t because we just have to win the election. We don’t agonise. We organise. We’ll just go out there and get the job done.”

Few powerful women – except maybe Hillary Clinton – have enraged the cultural warriors of the right like Pelosi. Her effectiveness as a legislator and her fearlessness as a political leader prompted Steve Bannon to label her ‘a total assassin’.

The bitter partisanship that roiled America has impacted the lives and careers many politicians on both sides of the aisle. But Pelosi has paid a higher price than most. “Nancy, where are you, Nancy?”, the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 called as they roamed the Capitol corridors, vandalising and smashing as they went and ransacking Pelosi’s office.

Later that evening, Pelosi, unbowed by the violence, insisted that Congress reconvene and finish their constitutionally mandated role of certifying the results of the 2020 election.

For Pelosi, the events of January 6 cast a longer and more menacing shadow. In the early hours of October 28, David DePape broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home where 82-year-old husband, Paul, was sleeping. “Where’s Nancy?” DePape demanded, in a chilling reprise of the January 6 chant, before attacking her husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull and inflicting multiple injuries to his arms and hands.

Last November, DePape was convicted by a federal jury of assaulting a family member of a federal official and of the attempted kidnapping of a federal official, charges that carry maximum sentences of 30 and 20 years in prison respectively.

The attack was devastating for Pelosi. “They weren’t after my husband; they were after me. So I have a guilt to carry for that. But it happened in our home, in our home,” she said, her voice wavering. “It’s hard when you have to go by the entrance place where the man came in, and into our bedroom.” Her husband, who she says is about 80 per cent recovered, is still dealing with the physical trauma.

Strangely she said they’ve never discussed the attack.

“We don’t talk about it. He and I have never had a conversation about what happened that night. I heard what he testified in court. That was required so I learned a little more then. But the doctors have said to him ‘don’t revisit it. Don’t watch it on TV. It only reinforces the trauma.’”

Despite the divisiveness that has roiled the country, she believes the majority of Trump supporters are ‘good people.’ “Insecurity about a role economically in the future for themselves and their children is what I think drives them,” she said.

Although she turns 84 next week, she shows no signs of slowing down. “I only intended to stay for ten years,” she marvels when I point out that she’ll have served four decades in Congress when she completes her next term.

The press obsession with age is selective, she notes wryly.

Pelosi was the chief antagonist in Trump’s presidency. “She’s going to get us,” Steve Bannon, then Trump’s chief strategist, warned following their first meeting.

Over the next four years, Trump wheeled in the television cameras to relay the battles that followed, confident he could humiliate and subjugate the Democratic leader.

But Pelosi proved far too nimble an opponent for his blunderbuss approach. And she seemed to relish cutting through his bluster and calling his bluff.

“To be very honest with you, he really didn’t know what he was talking about most of the time,” she said.

She cites Biden’s recent State of the Union address as an example of a president who “had command of the issues, who spoke of the legislation pending, of what he did but more importantly what he was going to do.”

“Donald Trump could never make a speech like that and that’s why he reduced his spewing forth to culturally hateful rather than professionally constructive issues,” she said.

Trump quickly discovered its limits when dealing with Pelosi. She refused to be cowed and there were plenty of mischief-tinged moments; including her exaggerated applause during a State of the Union and a reference to Trump as being morbidly obese.

Given the former president’s famously thin skin, was this a deliberate attempt to tweak him?

“Well no,” she said, wide-eyed. “I think I was just stating a fact.” Her expression gives her away before a chuckle escapes.

“About Joe Biden I would say this; he has the wisdom and knowledge – not just of issues but what has worked and what doesn’t work. Judgement that comes with experience and that’s so important,” she said.

“I can tell you this from personal experience in politics that as time goes by, you’re less judgmental. You’re much more. I don’t want to say respectful because you always have to be respectful, but you roll and you don’t get yourself bogged down. And I think because what’s his name – that other Bozo – because he doesn’t have any experience in politics, he just gets meaner.

“But this is a very sick person who needs an intervention from his family or from his advisers. Whatever is in it for them, greed for power, greed for money, I don’t know. But they should have intervened for the good of their family for the good of the creature and for the good of their country.”

Music lover

Pelosi’s long association with Ireland has brought her an unlikely dividend. A perennial access all areas pass to U2 concerts.

“I’ve attended more U2 concerts than any other politician. I’m certain of it,” she said, including in Las Vegas at the Sphere recently.

She picks up her phone and starts scrolling through it.

“There he is. Oh listen to this, listen to this.”

She beckons me in close and plays a clip where Bono, paying tribute to America concludes by saying; ‘I want to thank you Nancy Pelosi.’ From her phone you can hear excitement erupt amongst the family members who accompanied her.

An enormous smile lights up Pelosi’s face.

#nancy pelosi #madam speaker #LOVE THIS

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