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Eric Cantor

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Eric Cantor

Former U.S. Representative (R-VA)

Eric Cantor served as a United States representative from Virginia from 2001 to 2014 and as House majority leader from 2011 to 2014. He is currently the vice chairman and a managing director at the investment bank Moelis & Company.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on Nov. 3, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Pelosi’s Power

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Eric, let's start with Nancy Pelosi.The first time you met her, what was she like?What was her reputation by the time you come to town in 2001?Is she considered to be someone who hangs out with Republicans?What's she like?

Well, I think, first of all, anytime you think about Nancy Pelosi, you have to give her credit.She broke barriers.She became the first woman speaker of the House, and I think that is a historic note to make sure we recognize.

Listen, Nancy Pelosi was never an individual that extended her reach across the political aisle.Everything that I know and came to know about Nancy Pelosi in working with her over 14 years was that she was ironfisted in her partisanship and frankly didn't need or see the need to develop relationships across the aisle with Republicans.

Analyze her starting as a whip and her leadership talents.What did she bring to bear?She's well known for keeping her caucus together and such.Why?

Well, I think she, Nancy Pelosi, I think when she began her ascension in the leadership of the Democratic Party back in the early 2000s up until she became speaker and throughout the first term in her speakership when I served with her, and then when she became minority leader when I became the majority leader, there was a sense that she did have firm control on her troops, but again, those were days in which she had about a 30-member majority in the House, very, very different than today.And I think perhaps the skills that she demonstrated were much more applicable to that environment than they are to the environment today, which is, I think, an explanation for why she's had so much trouble this term under the Biden administration with the majority that she has being so slim.

The skills that you talk about, the partisanship that she has, where does she inherit that from?Her background is, she comes from Baltimore, the famous family, and her dad a mayor.A very partisan politics is played in Baltimore.And then she moves to San Francisco, which is of course a very liberal city, so she never had to deal with Republicans to a large extent.How is that defined by how she gets here?Is it partly one of the reasons why she has a lot of success in rising in the ranks of the leadership in the Democratic Party?

I don't think there's any question that given today's sort of the evolution of politics in the early 2000s up through today, so that 20-year period of time, we have seen increasingly the amount of partisanship and resulting polarization, both in Washington, which reflects the same throughout the country.And Nancy Pelosi is a fierce warrior in the partisan battles in Washington.She really, I believe, carries a disdain for my party in its opposition to what she's trying to achieve.And frankly, I experienced it when I became whip and then leader in having to deal with her.She is resolute in her temperament and her attitude towards having to work with Republicans.And if you can recall during the Bush years, Nancy Pelosi almost didn't want to be considered as a leader in the House; she wanted to be considered a leader on par with the president himself.

And so there was this disdain and almost arrogance that she carried about herself I think which either purposely got in the way of her finding relationships that she could rely on across the aisle, which really are nonexistent.

Where does that come from?

Look, I have to believe it comes from this story about her upbringing, where she grew up in the political wars in the city of Baltimore.And these were some—I don't know, I didn't live there; I just read about what her upbringing was and certainly the reputation of her family, the D'Alesandro family of Baltimore.I just have to believe that that real partisan fighting edge was developed early on for her, and that manifested itself now today, and I think was probably very attractive to some of the left and the intense feelings that the progress—now progressive left has towards my party and anything that sort of stands for sort of the free-market capitalism that I stand for.

Pelosi During the Bush Years

So let's talk about the Bush years and continue down the track you were on.Iraq—of course, she comes out very strongly against Iraq.She comes back and really hits Bush early on for the issue of Iraq.In those early days, she's really unafraid to play the game of partisan politics.What is she doing?How do you see her at that point?

Well, I think looking back, you can see that she's very strategic and took as close to an absolute opposition position as she could and was not interested in assuming the gray zone.She was all about the black and white, all about delineating the positions of her party versus mine.And as I said before, she was interested in going toe to toe with the president in the White House, not toe to toe with anybody in Congress.

2006 midterms, the Iraq issue is a prime issue.Nancy Pelosi uses it very efficiently and very successfully.Why was that, and what was the effect on her career?

Well, I think what was going on then is, after the Bush reelection in 2004, certainly the country became tired and weary of the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan at that point.And I think politically nobody says that Nancy Pelosi is not astute in terms of a Democrat partisan, and she saw very quickly where the intensity in her caucus was, and so she assumed this strong opposition to anything in the Bush White House.And I think it was a precursor for where we are today in the divide that exists between the two parties and frankly that which has divided the country.

And the effect on her career?

Well, I think that at the time—I do think that the country in 2000, you know, experienced a very, very close election, the Bush v. Gore election that had to be decided by the Supreme Court.And I think ever since then we have seen a very closely divided country.And with the advent of social media and all the forces that have come in to exaggerate and magnify that divide, I think the constituencies of both parties are looking to their representatives in Washington to fight, and it almost now has become more about the fight than it is about the substance.And she saw early on that the harder she fought, the more attractive she was as a leader for her—for her caucus members so they could go home and represent to their constituents that they're fighting hard every single day and not giving an inch.Again, very much prescient, I think, to where we are today.But Nancy saw that early on.

And look, I say again, there are consequences to assuming that method of leadership when you've got a Congress the way you have now that is so closely divided where she is now being held hostage by her own and has nowhere to turn because she has zero relationships on the other side of the aisle.

The Financial Crisis of 2008

… Talk a little bit about the financial crisis and what happened and how she was involved and this idea that she learned some lessons that she couldn't trust Republicans because of it.

Well, in 2008, when the collapse occurred with Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and AIG, all of that, when the financial crisis brought on by the housing crisis and the mortgage crisis, there was a very strong message sent by the Bush administration to the Hill.At the time I was chief deputy whip to then Roy Blunt [R-Mo.], and John Boehner had become the minority leader.President Bush was still in office in his last year.There was an election ongoing with President Obama and John McCain, and I remember being in a meeting at the White House, and the message was very clear: that we all needed to join together, or we wouldn't necessarily know what the future would bring.

So, you know, I remember having to hustle up the votes on the floor, and the first time that the TARP [Troubled Assets Relief Program] vote happened on the floor, it went down.And I'm not sure that if Nancy was all in at that point and whether her caucus was all in, but we quickly regathered as a Republican Caucus to make sure that we could deliver those votes.Again, not knowing what the future was to bring, and given the fact that we had the president and then-Secretary [Henry] Paulson telling us we had no choice or else our constituents may wake up the next morning without anything in their IRAs, it was that type of a moment.

So I'm not sure that Nancy learned any lessons yes or no, but she did in her caucus step up and help us get that passed at the time.

So the way the story goes, there was an agreement that, well, Pelosi said, "I can get this number of votes," and Boehner said, "I'll get this number of votes," and then Boehner didn't get that number of votes.And the lesson learned, according to people that wrote about Pelosi or are close to Pelosi, is that she learns a lesson here if she hasn't learned it before, which is the fact that you can't trust the GOP, whether in the minority or the majority, and that if you've got the votes to do it yourself, get it done, and that way you'll get more of what you need, and you don't have to dither.

Why, I don't think that's true, because I mean, look, at the end of the day, TARP was passed with a bipartisan vote.I mean, without Republicans, Nancy couldn't have delivered that vote.So the fact that it didn't work the first time—I remember specifically.I had to go back as chief deputy whip with Roy Blunt at the time, and we had to go twist some arms and get the members who were unwilling to do this on our part, go and get them to step up.But Nancy didn't have the votes.

So again, I'm not sure that that was any pivotal vote for her.I just think, listen, she's just very steeped in this partisan warfare.Always has been.It's come to roost now.It's come to roost now because she's really unable to wield her caucus, and the fact that she's almost been set up by the press and others for failure at this point, because she has been reputed to be this mastermind negotiator, whip of her caucus and the rest, and when she says something, you can take her word to the bank, so to speak, is what has been written about her.But I think what we've seen is over this Congress, there have been several instances in which she announces a vote—"We're absolutely going to take this vote this week, and we're doing XYZ"—and it doesn't come to pass.I think that has happened over so many weeks and months at this point, even the press corps, which has been so fawning over Nancy Pelosi, is now beginning to really doubt her prowess.

And I think this all goes back to sort of the method of operation and the severe partisanship that she assumes, and it just doesn't work when you have no room to maneuver, and even your own members can join in coalition to block you.And again, she has no relationships on the other side of the aisle to turn to.

[TARP], just put that moment of time, that vote in sort of a looking-back sort of way of how we should view it.It certainly seemed to have been a turning point in politics in America that the Tea Party began becoming more powerful.The Right to Occupy people on the left was becoming more powerful.There was more division within both parties.Did you see that as there was a before TARP and an after TARP kind of thing?

Look, I do think that the financial crisis, we're still feeling the aftermath of the financial crisis.And I think that the fact that Washington stepped up and targeted relief through the big-money center banks, again, ultimately the reasoning was, we didn't know if they collapsed where that would leave the everyday Americans and their retirement accounts and their portfolios on the stock exchanges.We didn't know.And so—but I think it provided an opening for the almost illiberal socialists on the left as well as the populists on the right to begin to, you know, ascend in terms of their appeal to the populace.There's no question about it.I mean, I remember even Barack Obama himself gave credence to the Occupy Wall Street movement and repeatedly talked about the 99% versus the 1%.This is coming from the president of the United States.And certainly Nancy Pelosi with her caucus was going to jump on that bandwagon, too, and assume the mantle of a fighter for the people.And sort of, yes, I do believe in this country, the divide that we saw in 2000 had a little bit of a receding moment during the Iraq War and after 9/11, but clearly, as the country began to grow tired of that, and then we are upon the financial crisis, there was clearly now a deepening fissure in this country post-the great financial crisis.

The Affordable Care Act

So let's talk about ACA and the health care debate.Nancy Pelosi and Obama had very different views of how to use power and how to move forward with this.There are some who said that she thought Obama misread the Republican Party on ACA, that he was naïve.She kept on saying, "You're not going to get the votes.We have to go forward and do as powerful a job, make it as big and do it as quick as we possibly can," again, coming back to the idea that you can't trust Republicans.What did you see as that relationship and possibly a division between how she saw the way forward and President Obama saw it?

Well, first of all, let's remember, it was, first, during that year when Obama first got elected post-financial crisis, the first big undertaking was their stimulus bill.And at the time, it was a nearly $1 trillion to try and address the fallout after the great financial crisis.And that was a bill that spoke to the economy; that was a bill that frankly we were excluded from in terms of negotiations as Republicans.And at that point, after Obama issued his famous line to me in the Roosevelt Room—"Elections have consequences, Eric, and I won"—we at that point knew we were not going to be a part of anything that the Democrats did.Obama came in with 70-some percent approval rating.Pelosi had supermajority, 30-member majority in the House.There was a 60-vote Senate Democratic majority.We knew at that point we weren't getting anything, and they demonstrated that in the stimulus bill.

But if you recall, Barack Obama wanted to start with the health care bill, which, you know, looking back was not the time to do that, because the country was reeling from the financial crisis, from an economic and jobs standpoint.But Nancy Pelosi, she wanted to introduce, and she brought up a cap and trade bill in the House.And that was her issue to want to go in and undertake, again, on a strictly partisan basis, knew her caucus members and the far left wanted to embark upon this agenda of cap and trade during a financial crisis.But again—so there was a real mismatch as far as what she and the Obama administration wanted to do.

So I wasn't in the discussions with Nancy and President Obama at the time, but I assume she had the ability to determine the agenda in the House, and so they went and tried to do cap and trade, which didn't go anywhere in the Senate, and then after that started the real discussions around the Obamacare ACA bill.

You know, I'll never forget, the Obama administration came to me, Nancy-Ann DeParle, who at the time was the woman in charge of the Obama health care agenda, and came into my office, and I was the Republican whip, and asked if we were going to be a part of what they were doing.And I said, "Well, we've certainly gotten burned on the stimulus, so you've got to tell me how it is that you're going to prove that you want our help, because otherwise it's futile to sit here and discuss."

And when we got into the substance of the bill, it was in the House, even the White House had joined with Pelosi in insisting that there would be a government option under the ACA, which essentially, if we remember that term, was for choices for Americans and for people who wanted some health insurance, you could opt for a government option versus the private sector.And in my mind, I knew that my members and the members of the Republican Caucus said, "Hey, why are we having the government regulate the private sector but then again also be a competitor to the private sector?"It didn't make any sense to me, didn't—wasn't going to bring down costs as we know government can't do that well.And so I told them, I said, "We can't do that.That is a deal breaker for us."

So at that point, the White House was following what Nancy Pelosi wanted to do and jamming everything they wanted.They weren't getting our help.And as we saw, what happened is they never got that in the Senate anyway.So I'm not so sure that, you know, it was Nancy that knew the better way.But it wasn't as if they were, you know, that the White House was necessarily listening to Nancy or not.I mean, she did what she wanted.

So what's your perspective on the story that after Scott Brown wins and they're all of a sudden thinking, oh, my God, we're going to have to go small, and Rahm Emanuel was talking to the Democratic Caucus saying, "We'll go small if we have to," and blah, blah, blah, and she goes to the White House and says, "No, no, no, we're not going small; we're going big.We have to go big.If you don't go big and you go small, you can count me out in trying to push this thing forward.If you go for it, I'll be involved," but that she was the one that sort of drove—

Yeah, again, this is—I'm not sure I'm following the same history books that maybe you are, because they had no choice… They couldn't go big or small; they had to deal with what they were given, period.They weren't going to get Republican support.And so that's why we ended up with the mess of the ACA that it was, because it was never brought into a conference to clean up, if you will, the provisions at odds that didn't make sense.And that's, I believe, why we've had this succession over the years of court challenges, unsuccessful as they were, but there was a lot of gray area left.

So there was no ability for Nancy to say yes or no.It was what it was.There was no option.They couldn't do anything other than take what they had, pass whatever they could try and get. …So there was no, there really wasn't a lot of option at that point.

The 2010 Midterm Elections

The consequences of it, by the time we get to the 2010 elections, is pretty dire for the Democrats, and she loses her speakership.But the other thing that happens in the 2010 elections is she took offense at the way the GOP dealt with her.There was $70 million worth of ads and stuff that were run about Nancy Pelosi around the country.There was the famous bus, "Dump Nancy," that was all over the country.There was a concerted effort to use Nancy as the figurehead of the Democratic Party.Why was that?Instead of going after Obama, in fact.Why was that?Was that a smart political move?

Well, listen, we went after Obama, too; there was no question.Obamacare was the thing that carried us into the majority, and Nancy was a big part of allowing that to happen.And it was these, you know, she's go this no-holds-barred attitude that she's going to go run the tables and the other side be damned, and that came to cost her the majority in 2010.I don't think this country likes these extreme shifts one way or the other.We've certainly seen that over the last decade, that increasingly now Washington changes hands a lot more frequently than it used to, again, because of the fickle electorate and I also think because of the lack of ability to get together and come up with a consensus rather than just do it "my way or the highway."I think Barack Obama was a huge cause of that, because the last time we ever got together was under Bush, after 9/11, and how this country did come together then.After that, we have not seen that type of bipartisanship since in any big way.

… One of the things that has been brought up, which is fascinating, is that she at some point, I think it was 2006, told her caucus, "You will not sign on to a bipartisan bill."What was that all about, and what did that say?

This was all part of her "Six for '06" agenda, I remember.And you know, it was very clear, again.Nancy Pelosi, very single-minded, very partisan, not interested in solving any problems, but in fighting the war.Very attractive to her members, especially those in the intense far left, and from San Francisco, representing those values.That was very attractive to Republicans to go and exploit because she's very much out of sync with the mainstream of this country.

And the idea of not allowing bipartisanship on bills?

Yeah, when Nancy Pelosi, you know, sent the word out to her members that they shouldn't be cooperating at all with the other side just like she didn't, because they didn't want to give our members any shot at claiming legislative victories in the political game—so yeah, she's a no-holds-barred politician that was about partisan warfare 100% of the time.Rahm Emanuel helped put that on steroids for her on the floor of the House in '05 and '06, which allowed them to win back the majority in that year.

Pelosi and Trump

… Trump comes in.What was her role with Trump?How did she deal with him?The battle between them started almost immediately.There's the story of the first meeting where they get together, and President Trump says a few things about the idea that he would have won the overall vote in the election, and then she calls him on it and says, "Mr. President, you have your facts wrong."And so almost immediately they were up against each other.What did you see in that relationship?

Well, Nancy Pelosi has been very consistent in her MO year in and year out.She is a partisan warrior, and she saw in Trump somebody to, you know, come up against as an equal.Again, he's the president; she's the Democratic leader.And she's—she is somebody he has to reckon with, and she didn't give up any opportunity to make a real spectacle of that.

Ultimately, you know, they were successful in limiting his tenure to one term, but it was this, again, absolute dedication to the partisan fight, in and out.Forget about the solution.Forget about the country.We are about the partisan warfare.

Division in the Democratic Party

By 2018, they win big; she will eventually become speaker again.But she has some, within her own party, a group of moderates come after her, saying, "You've had your time."What does that start to tell you about the Democratic Party at that point?

Well, I mean, it's not too dissimilar to what happened in my party.You know, on the ascension, everybody is unified in opposition, and then when you get the prize, all of a sudden we need to even go further.And we'll see, you know, again, how long this internecine fight lasts within the Democratic Party.But I do think that it's applicable to our system on both sides.We are a binary system, one party or the other, given the structure we have under the Constitution and the Electoral College.And I think because we have two parties, not more, those two parties have to absorb the fringes, and the fringes is where the intensity is.And the Democratic Party right now, the beating heart of that party is Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and the far-left socialist agenda…

It's interesting, that point you're making, because even with the Squad, famous stories about her back-and-forth with the Squad, here's these young progressives—and she was always the young progressive in the past—who have come along and are more aggressive, and so there starts to be a little bit of a break, and there's months of going back and forth about that.Did that start the divide because of the young progressives coming in remind you of any of your problems?

There's no question that there are a lot of analogies to the AOC Progressive Caucus and the Squad versus the Freedom Caucus and what had developed on the fringe on my side.… In the Democratic Caucus, I'm not so sure they have the hope-yes/vote-no crowd.I know in the Republican Conference, we very much had individual members who were worried about their primaries and would vote no on bills they really wanted to pass just to cover themselves in the primary.And we saw that on big bills when I was in the leader position when it came to the debt ceiling, when it came to funding of government or a host of things that members who really, I think, wanted to see the government continue, but yeah, weren't willing to take that vote for risk of exposing themselves in a primary.

Nancy Pelosi's caucus, they'll do that.They'll do that on political bills; they'll do that when it came to the reconciliation measure or the bipartisan infrastructure bill.The far-left progressives will stand up and stop that.But we've not seen them stand up and stop the funding of the government, the extension of the debt ceiling.So there is a little bit of a difference between what goes on on the two sides.

And I also think one of the things that Nancy Pelosi has managed is this ability to be 80-some years old and to still be speaker after being in D.C. 30, 40 years, whereas—you know, the culture on the Republican side is a little bit different.We have term limits for committee chairmen.The assumption is, when you—when the party loses its majority that the leader of that party steps down.None of that has happened on the Democratic side, and somehow or another, Nancy's firm grip on her caucus has been sustained.

Maybe the next thing I'll ask you is the impeachment.So she's trying to keep her caucus together.The progressives really want to go for impeachment.She's thinking it's never going to go through Senate.All it is, it will make the base happy.But the problem is, I've got all these moderates that we don't want to lose their seats or we want to take back seats that Trump won over that used to be Democratic.So she's between a rock and a hard place as well.How did you see that situation?

No, there's no question.I think Nancy is also, you know, she is a veteran politician in this town, and you always have to abide by the rule of 218.And she knew that the way that the Democrats found their way to the majority were in these suburban swing seats, you know, and so you've always got to be mindful of that, but yet you realize the overwhelming majority of your caucus is not necessarily aligned with those swing seats that are the majority makers.And it's a balancing act.And, you know, Pelosi's had to, you know, sort of do—execute on that for many years.

Again, I think now, though, she's having a lot of difficulty because the balancing act is so severe.Because the margins are just so slim, she has no room to maneuver versus when she first came into leadership, she could disregard two dozen people and still be fine.

The State of the Union, February 2020, Trump is feeling vindicated because it's going to the Senate.It's apparent they're not going to convict him.But he gives the Medal of Freedom to [Rush] Limbaugh, and he sort of takes over the room.Pelosi seems furious, and in the end she, of course, rips up the speech behind the president.How did you view that?What does that say about her?What's important to understand?

Look, I don't think that her ripping up the president's speech was necessarily a surprise given what I know about Nancy Pelosi.She is a fierce partisan warrior and knew the crowd she was playing to.She knew where the base was.She knows how to ignite the intensity of the base.That was a brilliant move as far as the base, the activist base of the Democratic Party, including the activist base in her membership and her caucus.

However, to most of us, it was disgusting and disdainful for her to do that and disrespect to the office of the presidency.But again, I talk about this a lot in my private life in the private sector now.There is a very different game that politicians play in Washington.Nancy Pelosi is an artful player of that game.I mean, you've got to give it to her.But there is absolutely a commitment to a slash-and-burn partisan warfare mindset that she has developed over the years that doesn't make a lot of sense to most normal people [as] they go about their everyday lives.

The irony, the fact it happens on both sides—the congressman who shouted out "You lie!" during Obama's speech to Congress.What's going on?

Again, you know, we have assumed now in our country the need to see elected leaders fight and maybe not even get a solution as long as they're fighting.And I think there are many, many causes to why we are where we are.I think our system and our country maintains its leadership despite the sort of dysfunctionality that has descended upon Washington.But I do think there are many reasons why the activist base on both sides are more interested in the fight than they are necessarily in the outcome.

January 6

Jan. 6: Talk to me a little bit about how you viewed the actions of Pelosi at that point.She seems to feel that she has to stand in the breach the day after Jan. 6. Jan. 7, she and Schumer call up the vice president trying to get him to invoke the 25th Amendment.She's talking to the Pentagon about the safety of nuclear weapons.She feels that the president is only thinking about complaining about the election, and the vice president is out of the picture at this point.She's next in line for the presidency.How do you view her actions?

Think about Nancy Pelosi's actions post-Jan. 6.I mean, I, too, was appalled by what I saw on Jan. 6.I've written about it in The Washington Post about what I thought was wrong with even members of my side that went along with this myth that somehow there could be a change in the outcome after the states had certified elections.But nonetheless, you had Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House assuming a role that would perpetrate more division, that didn't respond to the moment, to say, "We are a bigger country than this.We are a model to the world.You know, we are here for the people that put us here, not the activists who want to continue to see a brawl unfold in Washington."

She had no compunction about going in and even lighting it up further.I mean, she was as guilty of gaslighting the situation as any.

So again, I think it is striking to me that a leader like that would ignore the opportunity to try and be someone to bring folks back together.Again, I think it speaks to this very unyielding mentality that Nancy Pelosi developed very early on to just assume the fight each and every day, and fight harder and harder, no matter what the situation, because she plays by the rules in the halls of power in Washington, not by the sort of rule of norm and decency throughout the country.

The quotes from the [Bob] Woodward book is—she was telling people the president's "crazy"—"We have to do something.This is my constitutional obligation."

This is—this is—this is hogwash.Nancy Pelosi saw the opening to have yet more of a fight, to pour gasoline on what was already a burning, raging fire, to excite her activist base and help her members. …

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