The FRONTLINE Interviews

Rebecca Traister

Author, Good and Mad

Rebecca Traister is a writer-at-large for New York magazine and the author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk on Nov. 22, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Pelosi’s Power

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Pelosi as a History Maker

Is there such a thing as a fresh take on Nancy Pelosi?

… Yeah, I think that there's—I think anytime that you have a figure who has made history or done something unprecedented, there's sort of an endless number of takes or views on them, because there hasn't necessarily been the contextualized historical consideration of the role that they play.

So especially with political figures, where so much of the commentary is about the political choices that they're making in the moment, you often lose a lot of the historical context of the world in which their power originated, how they built their power, how the path that they took shaped the way that they wound up wielding power or that they are understood in the public.

And I think Nancy Pelosi's a great example of that.She is sort of unprecedented.You know, for a woman in United States politics, she has held a degree of authority and power that we don't have any previous models for.

So, you know, the question of fresh takes in today's media sort of implies, like, you know, a hot Twitter take.But do I think that there's room to really examine how this really remarkable figure got to the position she was in?Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for that.I think there's been a lot of—a lot of consideration that has yet to be done about Pelosi and the world in which, you know, she governed a very unruly caucus through really important times.

Without going into too much detail yet, let me ask you two more short questions.One … where on the long arc of feminism, Rebecca, does Nancy Pelosi fall?

… I think the notion that there is an arc of feminism or women's history or the notion that it's just all one straight shot of progress is very faulty.I think that's a story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel good about how we're always going in a better direction, no matter the setbacks.And I think it's false.I think it's a false story.

So I don't think it's necessarily the question of how Nancy Pelosi fits into the story of feminism.She's a very powerful woman.She's a woman, you know, who has had an unprecedented degree of power in this country and whose work has shaped contemporary politics and that to look at her on what somebody might call the arc of feminism means examining the world and circumstances into which she was born and the path she took through that world. …

You wrote that Nancy Pelosi was one of the toughest people you've ever met.In what way?

She exuded impermeability.When I—I have interviewed her only once in person.I've seen her speak in person a million times.… But there was one time that I got to sit down and interview her for a story that I was writing as a journalist.And in that one-on-one interaction—and I think people can feel this, you know, whether it's at her press conferences or whatever—her approach to performing her power and her authority is really interesting because it is—it's a performance of power that is all about presenting herself as inviolable, as completely in control of whatever interaction she's having.And she just exudes a kind of old-fashioned version of strength, of mastery.Now, that doesn't—I'm not saying that that means she always is in a position of mastering a situation or mastery, but that is the performance that she brings to a table in conversational interactions, is: "I'm in charge; I know what's happening."

And it really struck me.It kind of blew my hair back, you know.I'm used to interviewing—I interview a lot of women.I interview a lot of women who work in politics.I interview a lot of women who have power.And it's very rare that I interview somebody who so forcefully communicates that she's in charge.

Pelosi’s Early Life

… Let's go back and unpack her life and experiences, at least the ones we think are the most interesting.So she grows up in Baltimore.Her father's a charismatic congressman and mayor.… Her mom runs a political operation right out of the house.And we're told "Big Nancy" … was a political star.Her mom was also ambitious, wanted to start her own company, but her dad forbade it.What's the message sent to "Little Nancy" about her place, about what was possible in that environment?

Well, I think that the message that was sent to white middle-class women sort of raised in the middle of the 20th century wasn't exclusive to the D'Alesandro house, right, although obviously there were all kinds of internal messages about patriarchy that were very clearly and directly replicated within that family structure.But they reflected attitudes that were very broadly held in the 20th century.

And what you found were lots of stories like Big Nancy's, right, in which a white middle-class woman who might have professional or public or political ambition, real talents, extraordinary managerial skills, you know, sort of public savvy that we would now understand to be "Oh, well, you know, she could have put that to great use in a public/professional sphere," instead wound up doing that kind of work—the often very similar work as to what we might now understand as a campaign manager or a political consultant, right, doing it in a wholly domestic, wifely or familial—you know, daughters did it; sisters did it; mothers did it, right?That kind of political organizing work, campaign management work, all that sort of stuff was often done by women who had familial relationships to the man who was out doing the public work, who was wielding the public political authority or the professional authority.

It's not just in politics.That's also—you see all kinds of, you know, wives who helped their professor husbands, their writer husbands, their journalist husbands.Whether that was on an ideas level and coming up with arguments, whether it was doing the typing and the sort of amanuensis work, you see all kinds of professional, intellectual ambitions channeled into an officially domestic capacity by women who are adjacent to men who wield public power and, crucially, who also get paid, where the women do not and wind up dependent on the men who are in the public positions.

… There's a family painting done called "Victory Night," and Mom, Dad, the brothers, the four brothers, were all in these dark hues, and in the middle of the painting in a white outfit is little 7-year-old Nancy Pelosi.What does that say about what you've just talked about and that painting as the continuum of Nancy Pelosi's expectations, maybe aspirations?You tell me.

Well, Little Nancy D'Alesandro at the time would have absorbed the message from her family that I think lots of, again, white middle-class women were absorbing in that time and place, which was, she might have all the curiosity, excitement, natural talent for the politics that her father was engaged in, but there wasn't—it's not like she was staring at a path where it would have made any sense—culturally, socially—for her to say: "Oh, boy, I want to be a politician.I want to be mayor.I want to be in Congress.I want to be the speaker of the House."There's no—I think that we can sometimes impose a contemporary landscape on the past where, because we know that Nancy Pelosi, you know, has been the speaker of the House, we can say, "Oh, do you think she wanted to do this?"

What we forget is that in that period, for women, you know, people who were her gender, race and class, this was not—this was not an imaginative path that would have been open to her.So the message was: "This world is very exciting.You might have natural talents and affinities for it, but it's not something that anybody's going to sit you down and say, 'Here's how you do this.'" …

Pelosi and Motherhood

What we're going to do … in the film, thanks to your generosity in seeing things that way, is we'll watch her shed some of that and add some things to do it and become a different person along the way, driven by circumstance and her own skill and whatever.She has five kids in six years and for years basically is a stay-at-home mom.Any sense that during this time she was suffering from a touch of the problem that has no name?

Well, the time that I spoke to her about this period, which again was a very brief interview, interaction, she talks—but she speaks publicly very often about how motherhood was the most gratifying experience of her life, right?Now, one of the things to remember about any, you know, all of us, actually, is that we present versions of our story.And I have no reason to doubt—she describes loving motherhood; she describes loving having babies.She told me, you know, in 2018 that her dream was to have a company called Forever Infant or something, where her entire job was to help people get through the first year of babyhood, right?

But it's also true that Nancy Pelosi is, you know, has been one of the most powerful women in American politics, right?And especially for women raised in her generation where, again, the message was that the highest thing you could aspire to, and should aspire to, was married motherhood, right, and that anything other—wanting anything besides motherhood was a kind of violation of feminine expectation, right?

It is also true that there is a way of presenting your career and your personality if you are a groundbreakingly powerful woman, that there is an attractiveness in presenting yourself as "I am a mom; I'm the happiest I've ever been as a mom."It's a way of sanding down the edges of "I'm the most powerful woman you've ever dealt with," right?

It's almost like a disguise or something.

… Whether that's a conscious decision or whether it's also melded with the truth, which is that she loved having babies and loved being a mom.

Now, in that period, she has also described to me—you know, there was a period where she was a young mother, where they were living in New York City.She described on Halloween pamphleting apartments, you know, going with the stroller brigade.She was obviously—she never lost her interest in politics through the years in which she was having babies and raising them as a stay-at-home mother, both in New York and then in San Francisco.She was very involved in politics.It was obviously very interesting to her.And, you know, it's not that she ceased to participate in it.

Remember that, again, millions of stay-at-home moms did all kinds of work in political and professional spheres without holding positions of public authority or getting paid.

So part of what she was doing in those years, which might have been like local community stuff—the pamphleting, the talking, organizing, things like that—that's not different from what lots of women involved in politics in real ways might have been doing at the time.It's just that she wasn't holding office, and she wasn't officially running anybody's campaign.

Pelosi’s Early Political Career

So she runs for Congress, and in that first race something happens that will continue to happen.Not all the way along, but for the first few times she runs, she's accused of not being serious, of being a dilletante.A newspaper labels her a “party girl,” and not in the sense of party politics.Do you think those attacks were about who Pelosi was, or were they tapping into something bigger?

The questions of whether something is sexist or whether it's about the person in question are always very complicated, because the person in question and how they behave in the world is itself shaped always by their gender, by their race, by—right, in addition to all the individual character traits.But also how those individual character traits weave around expectations and limitations set by identity are always really complex questions.

So it is simultaneously possible that in her years in which her access to politics was often through—you know, she's—her husband—they're wealthy, right?And so they can host political events and fundraisers, right?That—and that's her access as a wife whose husband earns money.Her access to politics for a period is through fundraising social events, which themselves can get characterized in very feminized ways, never mind that every man ever to run in politics goes to a hell of a lot of parties, does a hell of a lot of socializing.

There is a way in which that behavior, which is part of political life in the United States, unfortunately, can be characterized, if you want to run down somebody who has done that kind of work, as party-girl behavior, right?And the circumstances that led her to be the wife of a wealthy man are an entry point for diminishing her as just a sort of dilletante party girl, right?

… So it's very hard to pull anything apart and say, "Oh, that part is sexist; that part is not sexist."It's all woven together.This is who, you know—this is how our lives unfold.And they unfold by sort of having to wind around these expectations set in part by identity.

By the time she gets to Congress, it's 1987.One woman we talked to said she watched Nancy speak on the floor, and the men were all tittering; it was an old boys club, as we all know Washington was and maybe still is in lots of significant ways.This is fascinating to me.We've interviewed about 20 people so far.She showed no anger, no emotion.The feeling, some people we talked to said—because you can't show yourself as an out-of-control woman, so she controlled it.Talk about that for me, will you?Was there actually a requirement—is there actually a requirement that a woman not show anger at these obvious sexist and other kinds of slights that were happening to her with some frequency?

Well, there's no requirement, in that there's not a rule book that says, "You may not do this."What there are, and what everybody is sort of steeped in and raised in—men and women—there are understandings that if you emote and you are a woman, that emotion will be received in certain ways.And those ways are determined in part by race and class, right?So that if you are a Black woman in politics who expresses anger, you're going to be demonized and vilified in certain ways.If you are a white woman who expresses anger, you're probably going to be treated as a hysteric and a child and infantilized in certain ways and treated as crazy.

… And then, of course, the whole set of diminishments that came with women entering political life—and this goes well back, you know, centuries before Pelosi enters Congress—that women are fundamentally unserious, overemotional, can't be trusted to wield political power.This is all—you know, men cry in politics all the time.White men cry in politics.John Boehner, you know, her peer, was famous for crying regularly in politics.Men get angry in politics.We have—you know, you've seen people like Brett Kavanaugh actually win their cases by being angry and emotional.These are not—these are not avenues that have been cut off for white men.

But those who enter politics who happen not to be white men have been raised understanding the ways in which various expressions of anger, sorrow, intense emotion will be punished, and in fact could work to hurt them.

… Pelosi's approach to being in power has been to show herself always to be in control.And I think that that speaks to some of my impressions of her as tough.And again, I don't mean that as—I'm not—it's not good or bad, right?That she has an extremely—she has built an extremely hard shell.Again, I'm not saying that in a critical or appreciative way.It just has been her tactic as she's risen, has been to create an extremely tough exterior so that you're not ever getting a sense in her public communications of what she is feeling.

You know, I think there have been instances where it seems that she may have lost her temper, you know, a little bit, a little bit, with her caucus or with the press.She's chided people here and there.But insofar as getting a sense that you're getting any raw emotion from Nancy Pelosi in her public expressions, that has happened very, very rarely.

Pelosi and the Republicans

… She takes on George W. Bush at a time that she's basically running for majority leader.She's whip at the time, and she takes him on about Iraq.It's 2003/04/05, in there.The response to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, but especially Nancy Pelosi taking on the president of the United States at a time we're at war, the blowback.They call her a traitor.She's almost an easy target for somebody like Rush Limbaugh.… Talk a little bit about that and how she responds. …

So Pelosi makes a remarkably rich target for the right wing, a right wing that of course has all kinds of ideological, political, economic commitments to a very certain kind of power structure, and that power structure is a capitalist white patriarchy.

And here is Nancy Pelosi who, first of all, is heading up or on her way to heading up, through some lenses, a party that wants to challenge the political positions of the right.And she herself is a historic figure as a woman who is doing that, and she is a woman who is challenging the president and the head of the Republican Party, right?

And we have to remember that there are, within a capitalist white patriarchy, the challenges come on an ideas level, and the challenges also come on an identity and symbolic level, and that this woman—and we have an entire culture that is built around ideas of who's supposed to be in the positions of authority and who's not.And Nancy Pelosi, as a person who is challenging the president of the United States, is a person who is not supposed to have the authority in this capitalist white patriarchy, not supposed to have the authority to talk back to the president of the United States during a war, right?

So as a figure who is violating those expectations, she is a terrifically ripe target for a right wing that wants to portray her—that wants to portray her as a villain.And so she is—they have a festival with her, right?

And she is, and it—she—this is in an era—they're about to do the same thing with Barack Obama.They're about—they do the same thing—they've already done the same thing with Hillary Clinton, right?This is the idea of these new kinds of politicians who have new kinds of power exerting an authority that is unfamiliar to an American public that has been raised on the idea that the people who are on your television sets at night, the people who are in your newspapers, making your decisions about war and about economic policy, look like they have for centuries and that they are white men.

And so here is a generation—and this is, you know—of people who are not white men, who look different, who are exerting authority, who are leading their party and who are engaging in a pitched partisan battle.And Nancy Pelosi is leading the Democrats in that moment in pitched battle against a Republican president who happens to be waging a wildly unpopular war.

And she is a tremendous threat, right?They were right to point to her as a threat.She is—she was a powerful leader of that, of her party.She was taking her party to a kind of victory over their party, a crucial one, right?They were right to identify her as a threat.

But what she offers them as a woman is a terrifically rich narrative for all the ways she can be villainous, right, because the nature of her as a threat, of Nancy Pelosi as a threat, corresponds to all kinds of nasty stereotypes that the American people have been trained to react badly to, right; that we are trained to fear and be made uncomfortable by women who have a kind of power that we're not used to, right; that she is a nasty teacher; that she is a—that she's, you know, she's a puppeteer; that she's controlling her party; that she's a woman who has all this power over these men; that the men in her party are whipped by her, right?

You know, there are all kinds of stereotypes they can just get their claws into, and they go wild with it.And so of course she became a rich target.

… You said somewhere that I read this weekend—you've written about angry women and how they can't have photos taken of themselves. We've already sort of discussed this.But the idea of specific photos where you catch a woman with her mouth open and you run it in the newspaper, playing into virtually every stereotype and fear of the nun or fear of the mom or whatever that's inherent in all those editorial choices, talk a little bit about that, the idea you've got to be really careful when you open your mouth and shout in public because that's the picture that's going to appear.

If you're a woman in public life who is threatening in her power, right, as Nancy Pelosi certainly was, you know, and part of your job is speaking in public, one of the things that can happen—because really, the objection is to women opening their mouths in public at all, right?—but that an image of you with your mouth open will be used against you.What it fundamentally conveys is this woman had the audacity to open her mouth and speak in public.Remember that we are in a country in which this is still, like, viewed as pretty suspicious.

But it will be, even if you aren't opening your mouth in anger—this happens all the time—women in politics simply giving speeches, there will be a still of them with their mouth open.And anybody who wants to make a negative point against them can use the photo and make it look like this woman was screaming in anger, which is something, again, that we are taught to rear back from, right, with old ideas about mothers or teachers yelling at us or chiding us, right?

But it happens.It happens all the time, and you will see it once you start looking.When you see photographs of powerful women, you'll see that the ones next to the stories or in, on, you know, on the news networks that object to those women themselves and their ideas—and it happens in both directions, left and right—will use photographs in which those women's mouths are open to convey how awful they are, right?So yeah, there are tremendous limitations on how she can respond.

But I would also say, particular to Nancy Pelosi and her approach, I would say that it is very much her style to just plow forward.That's my impression.And again, the kind of toughness and the way that she performs her power is, you say—and I think it's all tied to like, the hard shell and a sense of competitiveness.There are a couple—you know, I think about Pelosi and her approach to politics.It's so much about winning.

I asked her at a certain point, when she did work, very early in her political career before she held office, she did work on one of Jerry Brown's campaigns.

His first one in Maryland.

And, you know, she was telling me at some point in an interview about how she, at a victory party, people gave her credit, right?They said, "And it's all thanks to Nancy Pelosi."And I said, "Did that make you—you know, did that make you happy to get the credit?"That was my curiosity.And she said, "I was just happy we won."

She says often that her mantra for her caucus members—who often go out and slag her, you know, who often go out and say, "I can't support"—her mantra is the Al Davis line, "Just win, baby," right?She says this all the time: "Just win."

So she has, where I think many of us, men and women of every stripe, would respond in all kinds of ways to just having horrible things said about us all the time, to being painted as this villain, Pelosi is very single-minded about winning.And the questions of "Are they saying these things because I'm winning?" would probably loom large for her in a way that they might not for a lot of the rest so us, right? …

In 2010, the devastating loss.Friends lose.People who took hard votes for her on the [Affordable Care Act] lose.And there's this interview with Diane Sawyer that we found, where Sawyer keeps asking Pelosi, "How do you feel about this loss?"And Pelosi again and again refuses to speak at all about her emotions.She says she doesn't have time for emotions.Here's the quote: "Let me tell you, when I get time for that, I'll call you, and I'll let you know how it feels."Can you help us understand what might be going on at that moment? …

Well, again, I think that there are—I think there are a combination of factors there, in terms of her individual choices about how publicly emotional to be, how publicly to express or, in her case, to almost never express her feelings, right?And part of that is navigating around these sexist aspersions cast toward women in politics.And those aspersions were particularly powerful as she was coming up in the world, even before she entered politics, right?The notion that for women—women to express their emotions publicly was a sign of their weakness and actually could be used against them to argue that they shouldn't be in charge, that they shouldn't be, because, you know, they were just going to be so emotional they couldn't be trusted.

Now, again, I cannot ever describe that without noting that throughout history, men have been emotional in their power and their political careers.But she would have been very aware of those aspersions and—but her particular choice for how to navigate around them was to build a public—an approach to her public and political life in which she simply did not express or share her interior life with the public.

You know, she would describe it.She'd narrate it.She'd frequently talk about her family, right?It's not that she was—it's not that the public was cut off from any information about Nancy Pelosi's personal life.But her interior or emotional life was just not—it's like she decided it was not relevant to her career and that it would not, in any way, help her to be sharing her feelings.It's just a strategic approach that she took.

… And again, I want to be clear: I'm not saying this is a positive or a negative.It is just her approach.She can be absolutely bloodless in how she approaches the fate of her caucus, right?It is about gathering power.It is about getting votes.It's about having enough votes to get what needs to get done done.It is about often making concessions that ideologically are incredibly disappointing to a lot of her critics in order to get the win. …

They win in 2018.We're not going to talk about Trump in the very beginning.She says, "I don't want to talk about him."There's a few interactions, but they kind of keep each other at a distance.It's almost like he recognizes something inside of her that he's—it's too hot to go there, and she's competent at a level he recognizes and fears.

He was terrified of Nancy Pelosi.Trump was absolutely terrified of Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi and the Squad

… Let's talk just a little bit about the Squad.I hope that's not derisive.I know they picked the name, so it's become a cliché in my interviews with people.You say the Squad, it means something to people.I'm not sure it's a positive or a negative, but it means something.What's up with that?Here's Nancy Pelosi, once a progressive, maybe still a progressive in her heart, but managing this caucus, and the women in the Squad challenge her.It's almost like they're coming from different planets at a different time or something.But maybe I've got that all wrong.Help me understand what that was about, between Pelosi and especially AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], I guess, because she got the headlines.Help us get a sense.As you observed it, what were you thinking that was about?

Well, I don't think that anybody—again, because there's so much we don't know about those interactions, I don't think that anybody really knows—I have never seen reporting that fully tells the story about what the dynamics between Pelosi and the new, very progressive, younger generation of women who came in in 2018, some of whom were referred to as the Squad.I don't know that anybody really knows what those dynamics were.

I know that I have some guesses or some observations.I think that there are a couple things that are inarguably true: first of all, that politics in the Democratic Party were moving to the left, right; that a lot of the—a lot of the—in certain areas of the country, not across the country, but that the Trump administration created, provoked an engagement in Democratic and then in certain sectors of very progressive, left politics that produced a number of candidates who won their seats improbably, via a real kind of left activism that the Democratic Party hadn't been shaped by in decades, right?

So there's a new dynamic within her caucus, first of all, new to her.And that's one of the dynamics involved.

The other is that you had a generation of women—when Pelosi comes in to Congress, she is one of, you know, just a couple of dozen women there.I don't remember how many women were in Congress when she came in.

Twenty, I think, 20.

Twenty women.And she came in in an era—her contemporary, Pat Schroeder, once said that a male congressman had said to her after an election where a handful of women were elected, "It's beginning to look like a shopping mall in here," right?So Pelosi had come into this governing—into this legislative body at a time where she was in such a minority, there were such narrow paths for the very few women who were there.

Well, over time the number of women has grown, and then there was a surge in 2018.Many of them are young.Many of them were raised with totally different expectations for what was possible.They do, by some measures, come from a different planet because the worlds in which they were raised, many of them—many of them, you know—I'm trying to do the math, but some of them were born after she was already in Congress.I think that that's true.You know?

Of course.

So they have absolutely—and she acknowledges the generational difference, the generational difference with approach to self-presentation.The sort of narrow paths that were permitted for how you can present yourself and still get taken seriously as a woman have broadened, because in part—because of a generation that included her, that made it more—that adjusted American eyes to the notion of having some women in power.But that inevitably makes room for a broadening of who can have power, right?

Many of these women do not come from a white middle class.Many of them are coming from working-class backgrounds.There are a historic number of them who are women of color.You know, yes, there is a generation of women who come with different expectations, different ambitions, different commitments to progressive ideology and—here's where the strategy becomes important—and who have won their seats because of activism, of organizing, OK?

Now, Pelosi, who, yes, is a progressive, right, within the ideological spectrum is on the—has been historically on the left, toward the left of her caucus.But her job as leader of that caucus is actually not an ideological job, and this creates an enormous amount of tension within her party, and I think a lot of misunderstandings in how she's covered, too, right?I'm somebody who has—I'm a progressive.I often get incredibly frustrated with Nancy Pelosi.I get to be a progressive because I can write opinion in addition to being a reporter.

But I'm a person who is often wildly frustrated with Nancy Pelosi, because I feel like she makes a lot of compromises on progressive ideals and what should be progressive commitments that the party should stand behind.But her job is to manage the caucus, which includes those who are elected by sort of left coalitions and those who are put in office because they are fundamentally pretty conservative and very middle of the road.

So—and she has to figure out how to get this group together to vote through any kind of measure.And again, this speaks to her commitment to strategy.It's probably what historically made her such an effective speaker and leader of her party.Whether or not you think that effectiveness persists is open for debate.But I think she is widely acknowledged as having been an extremely talented leader.And in part it's because of her ability to manage these factions.Managing the factions means sometimes going head to head with those on the left of her caucus.

I would say it also means, and that she understands this, acknowledging that some of those people on the left have their seats because of their commitment to progressive ideals.And she understands that and respects that, too, right?

So—and this is—and so I don't know what the math between them was.I don't know what the dynamics between them was.I know that from the outside, I saw the first day where AOC went and sat in solidarity with protesters outside of Pelosi's office as an extremely effective form of political communication or theater, right?It was—it's—because everybody there has jobs to do in terms of communicating to their constituents what their—what their role is, why they're in Washington.AOC's job was to convey, "I am here to challenge the way that this party has been doing business."

She had knocked off a longstanding member of that party, and a longtime political ally of Nancy Pelosi's, right, in order to get that seat, and she needed to show that she was there to urge the party to behave differently.

Now, Nancy Pelosi had to show both that she was acknowledging AOC's presence there and that she was still the boss.Everybody had these performances that they had to give.And to call them performances, I'm not suggesting that they're fake.I'm suggesting that part of the job of politics is to communicate your positions within a power structure to the people who put you in that power structure.And I think that that day was a very effective example of that.

… She makes sure that they get the message that there is hard power, Nancy's hard power: votes."You are influence.Influence is not power; it's influence.You may have 5 million Instagram followers, but you are not powerful.I'm powerful."For me, it's one of the final kind of moments that happen where she has declared who she is and what she does and that she's—we all know she's playing this game; it's not her first rodeo.But it's fascinating to watch.

… You know, her critics will say that she has moved away from her progressive ideals.Again, I think that's more about the different nature of her job and managing a caucus versus being there as an advocate just for her district and her constituents and her own ideals, right?

So I think that's a question about, she has a different job.But there's also, again, an old-fashioned performance of power that, for her, has come with advertising—to some extent, being very open about her wealth and her—in a sort of precise way—I mean, I remember during the pandemic, there was the day she gave—everybody was doing Zoom interviews, and she opened the drawer of her freezer, and you saw, like, I can't remember what kind of ice cream it was, but it was a very expensive premium ice cream.You know, she always eats the Godiva chocolates, right?Now, of course, Godiva is, I guess, a San Francisco thing.

But she's very—again, she makes all these choices about how she conveys her authority, and some of those choices have wrapped around making sure people know that she is in control of what she eats and that what she eats is fancy and that it tastes really good.She loves chocolate.I mean, it's just an interesting—it's just such an interesting approach to how she's letting the world know that she's in control and that nothing is shaking her.

Rebecca, we have two minutes before our clock runs out. …

I gave really long answers. …

The 2020 State of the Union Address

Let's just make this the last question.… It's the State of the Union.[President Donald Trump has] given, in her room … he gives Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom—Rush Limbaugh!—right in front of her.And she of course stands up in the end and tears the speech in half.Political theater?More than that?Anything wrong with that?What's she manifesting?Is this real anger, or is this something else?Two minutes.

The ripping of the speech was tremendous theater.And make no—it was—it's completely theater.There's almost never a moment that a speaker of the House knows all eyes are going to be on them in the way that she knew in that moment, right?It's at Trump's State of the Union.You get the shot of the president, the vice president and the speaker for, you know, however long that lasts, an hour, an hour and a half.We know that political media analyzes every eyeroll, every decision to stand or not stand, to clap or not clap, to smile or not smile.

So she knows every eye is on even her most subtle gesture.And then she gets up and very ostentatiously rips up the speech.So, yes, of course it's political theater, on a huge scale, right?

The question is, what does it mean, right?And I don't know that anybody—you know, I—what is the degree—it certainly conveys something that was politically powerful in that period, which was a broadly held disgust for what this president was doing, what he was saying, you know, the kind of regime he was running.And in that, it is communicatively powerful, right, because—and we know that there was what, you know, what was derisively called the "hashtag resistance," right, the degree to which Americans who had previously been uninterested in politics, perhaps, perhaps had been sort of middle-of-the-road swing voters, who had just never paid attention, were feeling such revulsion toward Trump and his regime that they had become politically engaged, that they might have been watching the speech where they wouldn't have, you know, with another president in another time.

And so is that the gesture that is meaningful to them as a piece of theater, like the marches and the hashtags and everything?Yes.And I am somebody who believes that that kind of communication is really powerful.I don't just discount it as ephemeral, right, because in all of politics, in all of organizing, you need those shared messages, things that aren't necessarily meaningful: They're not the voting down of a bill; they're not the voting down of a … Supreme Court nominee. They don't have political meaning, but I think that the messaging is really crucial and has been throughout politics.

So I'm not somebody who denigrates that kind of gesture.I think the gesture and the slogans and the hats, I think those things are all really important to building lines of communication and an affinity politically and ideologically.So I think the gesture is important and meaningful in that way.

But then it gets to the questions of, OK—and this is where her critics, her progressive critics, would come in, I think with a valid point—OK, we're disgusted by Trump, but as a person with power in your party, a huge amount of power within your party, what kind of changes is the party making?What kind of—what kind of actions, non-gestural actions are happening within your party to stop this guy?

OK, so I would argue that the gesture, the ripping up, is actually politically powerful and that it's part of what engages an electorate that is eventually going to defeat Trump, right?But what are you doing to address the circumstances that got us to Donald Trump to begin with, right?And there are, you know, that's—we can write 100 books about what got us to Donald Trump to begin with.

But there are those progressive critics who would say, and I think that they have a point, that there's work that needs to be done, not just in objecting to this one president, but to making real structural change, not just in opposition to him, but within a Democratic Party where Nancy Pelosi has a lot of power.And what is she doing that is meaningful in that regard to prevent not just the continued presidency of Donald Trump, but the further power of the party and the opposition that he represents?

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