Pelosi's Power: Nancy Pelosi (interview) | FRONTLINE

it's january 6 of course we have a lot of people talking about it but i wanted to know from you of how do you hear uh about what has happened to your office to the fact that your people in your office are hiding behind closed doors that the crowds in the capitol are hunting for you are chanting your name as they go down the halls how do you hear about that wait i heard about what was well when this happened on january 6th i was presiding in security for me from the podium and so quickly i didn't even bring my phone with me i just left it there and we went to an undisclosed location before the invasion of the chamber when i saw i saw what was happening by seeing it on tv and then of course in conversation we could confirm and verify what we were seeing on tv when i came back to the capitol later and went to the room where the democrats and republicans were gathered from the house and saw my staff for the first time is when i really saw how traumatized they were from what had happened by this assault on the capital the insurrection against the congress the constitution and the capital of the united states but nothing i'll never forgive them for the trauma that they cost the staff and we do talk to a couple of people about what that was like and and it was awful uh it was awful clear the next couple of days you play an important role um one of the things you do is you call general milly um and it's an it's an unprecedented call conversation in a lot of ways what were you worried about what was the risk what was the risk to america when you when you were making those phone calls well it was an unprecedented call because we had an unprecedented insurrection incident incited by the president of the united states my concern was on multi-concern one is complete a recognition that that occupant of the white house at the time was not a well person not a patriot not a person who cared about our country and he had his hand on the um well he had a lot of power shall we say that i wanted to make sure was balanced by other considerations and that was the purpose of my call to general milley to make sure that the people in the white house were not feeding the flame of his insanity but in fact were honoring their oath of office to the constitution of the united states when when general milly told you that there would be no worries about him getting hold of nuclear weapons or is having an attack because of of of you know the way it was set up what was your reaction to what the general told you well my my challenge was multiple it was about that was about his access to nuclear power but it was also about what he could do as president between the sixth now the seventh of january and the twentieth of january uh what how he could use the military against the incoming president how they could endanger the inauguration itself by flyovers and who was in charge of all of that so it was about protecting the inauguration the peaceful transfer of power from where we were to when january 20th would be as well as the danger to our country for the president acting in an irresponsible way i'm going to bring you all the way back now to 1987. um why do you run for congress i had never intended in my whole life to run for public office i'm basically a very shy person i like putting other people as chair of the california democratic party promoting others and the rest but at that time people came to me and said you should run it was very sad time we lost our congresswoman solo burton and she really was the one who said you must run promise me you will run it'll make me feel better and so i agreed to look at it and uh and then then she passed away it was very sad for us because well loved her very much i never had intended to run for office i'm now going to take you through some critical moments with the with four presidents um let's talk about um your position on iraq during george bush's um [Music] well at the time of the um discussion of iraq i was the senior democrat on the intelligence committee and as such i was a member of the gang of four or eight depending on the configuration to had to receive all of the information and intelligence that the administration had i saw it i read it my staff did as well and i knew that there was no intelligence to support the threat that the administration was presenting when i said the intelligence does not support the threat the press said to me are you calling the president a liar i said no i'm stating a fact it's not there and i told my members i never encourage anybody but one way or another in war that's a pers a decision they have to make but i told them why i was voting against the war and overwhelmingly the democrats voted against that initiation of hostilities into iraq in the senate the chairman of the committee at that time for a moment the democrats had control of the senate and the chairman of the intelligence committee was democratic senator bob graham of florida he saw the same intelligence i did he voted the same way voted no but he didn't persuade his colleagues in the senate the democrats to do so most disappointing i mean he was great but they all just for some reason voted for the war was that a risky position to take politically at that point well people told me it was but again i i didn't intend to run for congress i didn't intend to run for leadership so i know that it was it was the position that i believed so i had no choice i mean here they were contending that that um a certain position about saddam hussein and development of nuclear weapons and it wasn't true the responsibility to put our young men and women whatever their ages are in harm way is a big one and i didn't take it lightly now people told me at the time if you don't vote for this war you have no future in this congress or in this party also what does that mean to me if i'm the only vote against the war i will vote against the war 2008 um the financial crisis um i'd like to talk to you about the fact that so so you you there's a bipartisan action to vote for tarp um an agreement has some people have said is to hold hands and jump off the bridge together to save the country um but i haven't heard it characterized quite that way but but um leader boehner um was not able to get the votes was that a lesson for you about what you could or could not depend upon the gop to do was that was that vote as you're watching that vote go down as the stock market is diving 700 points or whatever it was what's the lesson learned from that moment well to tell you that it's truth i it wasn't i wasn't really depending on speaker boehner i mean then leader boehner my friend i respected him i was pretty i was depending on the president of the united states and i basically had said i need names i need names we had agreed we'd get 120 they get 100 because we had the majority but it would be a balanced vote on the legislation and the president said how could they vote against us this is what we have to do and but i said i need names and then it was determined well we have to go forward with it even bernie frank said it's worse if you don't and i said i need names i need numbers i need names uh we provided many more than our 120. they provided far fewer of than there's even half of what they were supposed to provide so you saw what happened of that day that was most unfortunate but after when it happened they said why would you expect us to vote for someone we don't believe in intervention we don't believe in supervision we don't believe in regulation and when the walls come coming down we don't believe in intervention that that was true to their nature about not supporting governance jumping up again now to when when president obama is in office you folks are all work working on aca and the story goes and you tell me what's right and what's wrong is that well i've done that before yes you have and we listen to you and um uh the story goes is that the fact is that you were counseling the white house that you know the president was talking about bipartisanship but you were counseling also the fact that you'd learn lessons you you knew that if you had the votes um if you had the majorities you should push for what you want what the democrats stand for um and your counseling to some extent um you know go forward you know we have the ability to do this it's important to move forward um but were you listened to oh i think so well we eventually did go forward it wasn't really the white house it was the certain people in the senate but we always strive for bipartisanship that's really important we have a responsibility to try to find that but when we know it's not there we have to recognize that as well and to have time go by where our position gets misrepresented by the republicans rather than coming closer to us was i think most unfortunate but we did pass the bill and that's really what mattered when scott brown was elected and took kennedy's seat in my state of massachusetts things changed big time and there's reporting on the white house meeting that took place and there was conversations about going small to get it through rahm emanuel was talking to me people in your caucus and you were not happy with that because of the fact that you you thought that was undercutting you you were counseling them no no no we go big we go big we go fast we get this done we have the numbers we have the votes we need to do this talk a little bit about that moment in history i wasn't worried about rahm emanuel undercutting me and we were very good friends as you probably know i was concerned about us walking away from the opportunity that we had of a generation to pass the affordable care act so that was really more my focus rather than what was going on with members the members some of the members that he was talking to were never going to vote for the bill anyway so so in any case we had when senator kennedy's seat was lost people asked me in the press now what now what and i said well we have an opportunity of a generation we're not going to let anything stand in our way to pass the affordable care act if there's a big fence blocking us we will push open the gate if that doesn't work we'll climb the fence if that doesn't work we'll pole vault in if that doesn't work we'll parachute in but we're not letting anything stand in the way of passing the affordable care act so when we succeeded they said well which did you do we just pushed open that gate because we had our members and not only that we had the nuns we have so many all of the outside vips very important people volunteers in policy and in politics helping us push open that gate so we're never going to walk away from the big opportunity in 2010 of course um and i know it's consequences of tarp is it's also consequences of health care but the republicans come after you tooth and nail they've spent 70 million dollars on ads focused on you they have a bus driving around the country focused on you um they were they're very effective in some ways of hurting other democrats by using you as a target as a victim as a a tool you're enjoying this too much i am i know no no do you this part of it do you do you you know looking back at that time do you re-examine your strategy or is this just something you expected no what would you mean we would not pass the affordable care act and have 20 million more people have access to health but i i appreciate how you started this jim because i don't believe that we lost the election because of the affordable care act it kind of been an easy out for press to pick that up i think it was more about tarp so i appreciate you mentioning it with tarp it was supposed to be bipartisan fully bipartisan but we had to pass it the public had the impression we were choosing wall street over main street that was not the case we were doing this for our economy the chairman of the fed told us if we had not acted immediately we would not even have an economy four days later so it was urgent that we pass it but i think that had more to do with the election of 2010 and what happened after wall street and then tea party and that you see the right and the left taking hard-line positions against the status quo i think that had more to do with the election than the affordable care act because most of the people who lost didn't even vote for the affordable care act the attacks on you how did you take that that's you're in the arena you got to take a punch get in that arena you got to take a punch you got to be ready to throw a punch for the children but um i didn't worry about it about me but i did not like it from the standpoint up one of my goals here was to increase the number of women in congress there were only 23 when i came 12 democrats now we have 90. but that was that's not an encouragement to women to run to see somebody become a target it's dangerous because it's threatening and they were very violent threatening and crude and all that in addition to their ads they did that again in 2018 they had 137 000 ads against me but it didn't work that time during this period of time and through a lot of the history of you know back to 2003 six and on the gop has gone through a lot of changes and it's the tea party as you say came in and they became much more partisan and washington became more partisan i brought this up at one point we talked to cantor uh at some point and and um brought this up and he blamed you he said you know when when nancy pelosi was became leader and then speaker um everything around here became more partisan we could have worked on aca with with obama but not with nancy pelosi he blames you you're real you know what i don't want to react to him he's insignificant he's not even here and by the way actually if you really are seeking the truth except for whatever the crap they come up with newt gingrich was the one who made the change from uh the honest debate on issues the role of government and the rest uh when he became speaker he became that he was coaching them to call us all traitors and treasonous and all the rest of that he was the one who made the big change why did they focus on you why do they why do they say things like that because i was effective i was the biggest fundraiser they'd ever seen apart from somebody running for president that we were able to pass our legislation so politically policy wise in the rest if you're effective you're a target and who you became one hell of a target for them well you're enjoying this part of the conversation i thought we had 20 minutes and you're spending this time with that we're gonna we're but let me just say this we're moving to trump this is you know it's teddy roosevelt he made the most beautiful speech about being in the arena you're either a spectator or you're in the arena and uh i recognized that i was in the arena and that's what went with the territory but we came back so donald trump comes to power and that first meeting you go to with leadership to to the white house and um trump starts lying about numbers of voters and numbers of audience members at the inauguration and you stand up to him on that very first meeting what did that meeting define for you about trump and what did it how did it define the strategy that on how you would have to deal with this president well it confirmed it didn't define anything about him but it confirmed thief this meeting of with the bipartisan bicameral leadership of the congress is an historic meeting with the president of the united states following his inauguration this is historic i've been to that meeting on a number of occasions and but never one like this in fact in the room there wasn't anybody else except mitch mcconnell who had been to such a meeting and in those meetings the president of the united states speaks and then the speaker speaks and then the majority leader speaks and then the minority leader and minority leader but these people had not been to the meeting so they didn't realize that there was a protocol including the president of the united states so basically we go to the meeting and it's a again an historic occasion and the president of the united states and i say how was he going to begin the meeting is he going to quote the bible is he going to quote our founders he's going to say something about his family and how he got to be here how would the president begin this very historic meeting and what this means to him that was not how he started the meeting he puts his hands on the desk like this slouches into the desk and said you know i won the popular vote uh because five million people voted who were not legal to vote and so i won the popular vote now none of these people understood i'm not i'm a minority leader then i'm not the speaker they didn't know that there was a format a protocol and neither did the president so i thought i would take the opportunity to tell the president that what he was saying was not true that it was not true and he said i'm not even counting california it's not true mr president and if you want to have a discussion about issues my colleagues on both sides of the out can assess that we need to stipulate two facts whether it's a number that we want to have for a budget or a timetable that we want to reach you have to stipulate the facts and they knew that because that's how you you have to begin with the facts and what you're saying is not true there is no data no truth no facts no evidence to support what you're saying and why i'm saying this to you is because i thought we would be able to talk about infrastructure what is our goal financially our timetable and the rest but if you're not going to stipulate the facts then we can't we can't proceed effectively so he said oh infrastructure infrastructure we're going to do that right away right mitch we're going to do that we're going to have a trillion dollar program we're going to do it right away and mitch says not unless it's paid for so then when the senators left they went out the republican senator said i think there were two of them they said the president said that he won the popular vote and i told him it wasn't true why they said that i don't know because i don't think it was too complimentary of the president but i think they wanted to co-opt my tell him that but i wasn't going to tell him i don't say what goes on in the presidential meeting then chuck went out and they asked him that nothing nancy said it wasn't did no the president said he won the popular vote and chuck said yeah but nancy told him it wasn't true he's the one who told him that part so then the press converged i'd already come to the capitol i didn't go out to the press i came to the capitol and they said what did you think when he did that i said well i prayed for him but more importantly i prayed for the united states of america imagine abusing that first historic meeting for politics and falsehood so it didn't tell me anything it just confirmed sadly what we probably all knew we talked to a lot of other people about a lot of other events in in the in that period of time with trump but one thing we i'd like to ask you about is so by the time after the first impeachment what was the your relationship like with trump at that point post impeachment i think it was demonstrated at the meeting that we had at the white house the bipartisan bicameral meeting with his some of his cabinet and the rest where he again went down a path of misrepresentation uh treating secretary mattis who was no longer there with great disrespect he was horrible and uh just his usual disrespect for his office our office and uh our democracy so that's when i said to him mr president with you all roads lead to putin and that was in my view so we're not allowed to bring phones or cameras into those meetings they took the picture thought that that was their big moment and it was such a validation of how pathetic he is when biden becomes president this is post january 6 of course it's post four years of trump what were you all um up against at that point what were we up against yeah well i mean america was a different place in a lot of ways at that point the expectations were different when you came in and you knew what what you needed to do what was it what was the situation what was it like what were you up against we say a lot this most important election of our time but the election of joe biden was it was so crucial to defeat them that person who was in the white house but we had passed we had been working on our heroes act for a long time we couldn't get much of it in because of a previous occupant of the white house not sharing our values so we were ready from the standpoint of congress with an agenda for the people and of course it was based on respecting governance and respecting science when we're talking about covid that was very important so if we were up against anything it was a pandemic what was good was that now we had uh on the horizon some vaccines thank god and thank god and science and um we still had 20 days or a couple months more of incoming president but we were prepared so that when when president biden took office we moved quickly with the rescue package which did just that put shots in the arms money in the pockets people and jobs children more safely in schools and then we went on with the rest of the agenda that we're dealing with now so we're up against upper was it was glorious actually it wasn't negative again being against anything except the heartbreak of so many people who had lost their lives and their livelihood because of the pandemic the infrastructure the bbb and everything else that you guys have done most aggressive legislation in a generation at least yeah um what was the risk what was the risk what was the opportunity we see things as opportunity and what the risk was because you had to think about that i see everything as an opportunity i see every risk every crisis as an opportunity and we had a president who had a big vision and he wanted to work in a very bipartisan way and when he was able to reach some agreement with in a bipartisan way on infrastructure he made it clear that while that was important to him he would not confine his vision to what was only possible with the republicans in terms of infrastructure because they were again ignoring science when it came to climate ignoring governance when it came to some other legislation that relates to climate as well regulation and the rest so we were so proud of him because he was so courageous so visionary and we're excited about the legislation the rescue package for starters which was big and then we're calling it the biff the bipartisan infrastructure framework that's not its official name but also that the president was clear i want to find bipartisanship but i won't confine my vision to that the uh the importance of the victory in the house and the victory in the house on bbb i thought you meant last september november well that was important we had very shared values in that regard the challenge came when the senate made it clear they weren't going for 3.5 and that we had to reduce the number so people get used to 3.5 and when you reduce the number you have to keep everybody in the consensus but it was always very positive i never had any doubt that we would would pass it uh we have lots of uh people who were getting as i say used to 3.5 which was this bill is huge even at half of 3.5 it's huge on top of one point eight or nine in the rescue one point one in the other so that's three and now nearly two nearly five trillion dollars i think from the outside people see the press likes to play up the differences in the rest but we knew how we had a strong consensus for abel and that there was an agreement that would be reached i guess again it's lessons learned from from the past because you did this without the huge majorities that you had in the past to pass things um and there was a bit of division within the caucus between the moderates and the progressives but you brought them all together there wasn't when you say the moderates it was about eight people who had by and large we had 95 of our caucus or 96 of our caucus unified so there were a few who weren't but when you only have a three vote margin everybody on in the full spectrum are important but it's important to note that we all had a common goal and that we would we would reach it together but there wasn't the press i guess that sells papers or something sells ads it was just making it like there was a big break and the moderates the whole shall we say our new democratic coalition which are the modern they were practically 100 percent for the legislation maybe a few of those eight were members of that but by and large the moderates were very there wasn't that division but the press made it look that way and then that feeds the flame of who can show that they're more progressive or more whatever but i i i don't i don't spend a whole lot of time on that uh the fact is we had a president with a vision we had a plan with the legislation we had to cut it shorter we knew we were going to pass it there's an understanding though that you've said in the past that that's interesting because you everybody says that you you are very practical and you're very good at counting numbers and one of the things that you talked about in the past with the squad i guess where you said that power is a very important thing to understand because washington's all about power and having an audience a twitter audience compared to having votes in congress is a very different thing the lesson that has to be learned by any congress person coming to washington about what power means that you've learned about is what well i do think that that it's important to have support in the public and however people receive their communication and every one of our members is a valued member of ours but let me hearken back to your original question we only won the affordable care act by one vote or two votes depending on which bill you're counting so we didn't have even though we had a big margin we didn't have all of those votes on the bill it's frequently a close call as it was this time i think we just lost one vote on bbb we lost maybe 30 some votes on the affordable care act just because you have a bigger margin doesn't mean they're all voting with you so our margin was even closer on the affordable care act than it was on biff or bbb what's the most important lesson you've ever learned about your job and doing your job successfully at all these years what's the thing that you understood maybe that you learned from your mom or your dad from the early early days what made you the speaker that you are you're saying lessons learned as if i have some regret or something no i don't know in a positive way the most important thing is to listen to people and to respect their point of view we have a very diverse caucus generationally geographically gender gender identity ethnically did i say that and i represent a district that is magnificent and i love it and i am so honored to represent it however not everybody represents a district like that and they have the respect for their own district so we i always kind of speak to members about respecting everyone who's here and the people who sent them here in recent years we see a a big difference between the across the aisle them than even there was before but i would say respect listening consensus building and people think that we have a top-down thing we really never have no matter who might say that or think it it's always been bubble up and that's how we think our economy should work as well as listening to meet the needs of the people as they see their concerns and again it's all about the numbers it doesn't really have to know how to count and and so when somebody isn't involved in the development of the legislation because you're either it's like any product you are designing it you are making it you are financing it and you are advertising it so when we're involved in all of that if you're not on the committee that is either conceiving or making the bill how can you be in as strong a promoter unless you understand it and you give us your view as to what it's about so that you can promote it and of course financing it is where the rubber meets the road sometimes because people don't want to have to spend the money to do the job that is effective in terms of the design manufacture and promoting of the legislation so it's about respect for i would use that word over and over again respecting listening consensus building about it the um the members are absolutely great it's about their courage and nothing nothing nothing you know i get many compliments from what i do believe it or not i do and i am i always accept on behalf of the courage of the house democrats because they are very courageous we have as a array of um districts i always say our our diversity is our strength our unity is our power now how do we turn that diversity into unity listening respectfully and sharing vision it's a much more diverse congress now than it was when you first came happily so and that's a good thing and you were able to conquer it which is still an amazing an amazing thing as a woman you came to an old boys club basically but you accomplished an awful lot uh despite that which is i think is fascinating well we have more women i think the fact that we have more women enabled us to have first woman speaker so but we we just made a decision it's all a decision so i say to the members that you have a decision to win the election yes we decide we're going to win the alliance then you have to make every decision in favor of that and that means containing some of our exuberances from time to time it means working very hard to build the consensus to have a common message when we want to know six we were left to our own develop we didn't have a president in the white house and we did a new direction for america sixth row six six bills we would pass in the first 100 hours of being in office five of them became law one did not enabling the secretary of hhs to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices that was of seven january 18 same thing no president in the white house so it was our message for the people lower health care costs by lowering the cost of prescription drugs bigger paychecks by building infrastructure of america in a greenway cleaner government for the people act the um so again this all came from the caucus they developed the message they manufactured they designed it they promoted it and it was successful for us because it sprang from them not from on high that's what you call me

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 217,081

Keywords:

Id: UogaovDqY0A

Length: 36min 43sec (2203 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022