House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would have fought off the Capitol rioters had she been caught on January 6.
‘Well, I’m pretty tough. I’m a street fighter,’ Pelosi said in an interview with USA Today. ‘They would have had a battle on their hands.’
The California Democrat then pointed to the 4-inch stiletto heels she wears, adding, ‘I would have had these’ to use as weapons.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is photographed presiding over the House chamber on January 6 before the Capitol insurrection
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is known for wearing 4-inch stilettos and told USA Today this week that she would have wielded them as a weapon against the MAGA mob
Richard Barnett, a supporter of President Donald Trump sits inside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 6
Pelosi was whisked away by her security detail and didn’t have the same kind of close calls as Vice President Mike Pence and now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Footage of both Pence and Schumer narrowly escaping the mob were used by Democratic impeachment managers in former President Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial over inciting the insurrection.
Pelosi agreed with USA Today’s Susan Page and Ledyard King that the rioters were out to kill her.
‘That’s what they were setting out to do,’ the top Democrat acknowledged.
She added that she was never personally fearful that day.
‘I was never personally afraid because I had so much security for myself,’ Pelosi said. ‘I was afraid for everybody else, and I’ll never forgive them [for] the trauma that they caused to the staff and the members.’
Accounts from that day include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hiding in her office bathroom mistaking a member of the Capitol Police for a rioter.
Rioters made their way into Pelosi’s office – and her staff barricaded themselves into a conference room and hid under a table as the office was ramsacked, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
‘I do think it will have an impact on how people decide to come to work here or stay to work here and the rest,’ Pelosi told USA Today.
The speaker said she’s open to having a select committee investigate January 6 – similar to the select committee Republicans formed to probe Benghazi, if efforts to create a January 6 commission fail.
There have been across-the-aisle disagreements on the scope of a commission and how its members would be chosen.
Nancy Pelosi calls George Floyd’s death a ‘public assassination’ and says if she was there she would have ‘just pulled Derek Chauvin off’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called George Floyd’s death a ‘public assassination,’ speaking about officer Derek Chauvin’s trial from Capitol Hill Tuesday.
Pelosi told USA Today she hasn’t watched the full trial, but has kept up with developments via news accounts.
‘I feel sad about the spectators, and that that young woman who said she’s up all night because she wonders what she could have done differently,’ Pelosi said. ‘I think if any of us was there, we would have gone up and just pulled him off,’ she said of Chauvin, who is facing both murder and manslaughter charges.
‘I think if any of us was there, we would have gone up and just pulled him off,’ Pelosi said of Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes
She added, ‘But we might have gotten shot, and that’s probably why somebody didn’t pull him off.’
Throughout the sit-down with USA Today’s Susan Page – who has written a biography about Pelosi that comes out later this month – and Ledyard King, the House speaker talked about how she has deep respect for law enforcement.
She added, however, ‘that isn’t a license to kill. And that’s what happened.’
‘That was a public assassination of George Floyd,’ she said.
Pelosi, like President Joe Biden, has backed the House-passed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which implements some federal policing reforms.
‘I was raised in a family where, be true to the men in blue – police and fire. They save our lives. They risk their lives. They leave home. They don’t know if they’re coming home. Their families make sacrifices for our safety,’ she said. ‘So I have a respect for that as I do for our people here.’
Pelosi argued that officers could benefit from better training, something the George Floyd act would provide.
She pointed to the Sunday police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright outside of Minneapolis.
‘How could it be that violence of that kind is such an early resort for some of these police officers?’ she said. ‘There just has to be some better training.’
Pelosi’s interview with USA Today came the same day that she attended a memorial service for Capitol Police officer Billy Evans, who was killed on April 2 when a man rammed him before slamming a car into a Capitol barricade.
Pelosi said Evans was a ‘martyr for our democracy.’
She doesn’t back the progressive wing of her party’s cry to ‘defund the police.’
‘Forget that. That has no place,’ the speaker said.
‘Safety is essential to everyone’s life. But I find the [Chauvin] trial so disappointing,’ she continued. ‘And maybe my disappointment springs from my expectation that these are our protectors.’
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is currently sitting in the Senate without enough votes to pass.
Negotiations are ongoing, as White House press secretary Jen Psaski said Tuesday, between lawmakers like Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who introduced his own police reform bill after Floyd’s Memorial Day death.
Nancy Pelosi tears into ‘the Squad’ and tells them ‘this is not a one-person show, this is the United States Congress’ in new book
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unloaded on ‘the Squad’ when talking about the progressive cohort to author Susan Page, whose book ‘Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power’ come out next week.
Axios reported some early details on Monday, including that Pelosi adopted a child-like voice when talking about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 31-year-old ringleader of the group, who was previously the youngest member of Congress.
‘Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power’ comes out next Tuesday and includes details like Pelosi’s first call with the newly elected Donald Trump
In the book, Pelosi gives ‘the Squad’ blunt advice: ‘You’re not a one-person show. This is the Congress of the United States.’
Page, USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, spoke to Pelosi 10 times for the biography.
Pelosi told friends and family to participate in the process too.
Pelosi didn’t hold back in her assessment of some of her colleagues.
In their second sit-down, which occurred in July 2019, Page said Pelosi’s dispute with ‘the Squad’ had ‘exploded.’
‘Her anger at the four new progressive congresswomen was palpable,’ Page recalled.
Pelosi sat down for a meeting with Ocasio-Cortez later that month in an effort to minimize tensions.
Pelosi also told Page that Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican, ‘is not a force for good in the country.’
‘He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own,’ Pelosi said.
In an excerpt from the book posted on USA Today’s website Friday, Page captures Pelosi’s first conversation with now former President Donald Trump after he won the 2016 race.
Pelosi, then in the minority, called Trump at Trump Tower to congratulate him on his win and offer her hope that they could work together.
‘Nancy, me too,’ Trump replied. ‘We’ll get some good things done.’
Trump told Pelosi that she could deliver ‘better than anybody.’
‘Don’t forget, I was a supporter of yours,’ Trump told the Democratic leader, a reference to a donation he had made to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before becoming a Republican. ‘I think you’re terrific.’
Pelosi suggested to the incoming president that he schedule a session to talk to the bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues.
He put her on the phone with Ivanka Trump. ‘Talk to my daughter about it,’ Trump said.
‘Now it was Pelosi’s turn to be surprised. The House Democratic leader found herself listening to Trump’s thirty-five-year-old daughter, whose résumé mostly involved working on enterprises named Trump, relay her thoughts on childcare policy,’ Page wrote.
Page also revealed that Pelosi had planned to retire after the 2016 election of Hillary Clinton, as Clinton would have eclipsed her as the highest-ranking woman in American political history.
‘She had intended to step back from elective office once Hillary was in the White House. That idea was instantly shelved,’ Page wrote.
The pain of Trump’s election ‘was physical, it was actually physical,’ Pelosi told Page.
‘Like a mule kicking you in the back over and over again,’ Pelosi said.
