Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss the midterm elections, Democratic accomplishments, the January 6th Committee investigation and other news of the day. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Andrea Mitchell. Joining me now to discuss the midterms and other important topics: the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Welcome, Madam Speaker. Thank you very much for coming.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure to be here.

Andrea Mitchell. So let's talk about rising inflation concerns along with crime, giving momentum, new momentum to Republicans after the Democrats were closing the gap, the historic gap.

Speaker Pelosi. Yes.

Andrea Mitchell. So after the Supreme Court ruling, there was huge outrage. That has seemed to subside, at least among overriding concerns. Despite all the legislative accomplishments – and I want to cite them, I want to say it's been an extraordinary session. You and the President have done so much in terms of domestic concerns, the economy. Why is this message – why do you think the President hasn't gotten this message through to the voters?

Speaker Pelosi. Well first of all, let me say that I think much of what you have said I don't agree with. That is to say, the New York Times poll, I think, is an outlier poll. You cite one poll, but all the other polls have a different –

Andrea Mitchell. But it's also the RealClearPolitics average showing similar issues.

Speaker Pelosi. But that was one that brought down the average, and it was an outlier. It wasn't that big a sample. So I dismiss that. I have been – since Congress adjourned, I have been in an average of five states a week, and I can tell you that women's concerns about their freedom are very, very much still very significant in terms of how they will vote. In fact, 80 percent of people who care about a woman's right to choose say they will vote – it will determine who they vote for.

So again, Washington has always been, ‘Republicans are going to win, there's no question,' for a year and a half. Now that that has diminished in terms of that certainty and there is a real race on, the Republicans are pouring endless money – dark, undisclosed, special interest money – into the campaigns. But we're holding our own. It's a matter of who turns out to vote.

There are issues that we – of course, we want to fight inflation. It's a global issue. But some of the inflation in our country sprang from the fact that this President created nearly ten million jobs – at least nine million jobs working with the private sector. The private sector creates a lot of that. And when you – as the distinguished Chair of the Fed told me when I was a brand new Member of Congress, Chairman Greenspan said, when you're talking about inflation, unemployment can be ‘dangerously low.' So they are not unrelated.

So, we feel – we feel pretty good about it. We – I track these – this – these campaigns very carefully. I believe that we will have the mobilization to own the ground, to turn out the vote. The clear message.

They want to – we want to give women freedom of choice. They want to have a ban on abortion. We want to support and strengthen Medicare, Social Security, et cetera. They want to use the debt ceiling to cut that. We want to – we have, we have lowered the cost of prescription drugs for seniors. They want to reverse that. We want to save the planet for our children and the future. They say that that's a hoax. And that's the argument they used on the Floor to oppose the Inflation Reduction Act, which made historic gains for fighting the climate –

Andrea Mitchell. Let me ask, why did the President wait until now to make this major push for what he says will be a post-election call for a fast track on abortion rights nationwide? Because the House passed it in the fall, after – after Texas.

Speaker Pelosi. Yes.

Andrea Mitchell. The Senate failed to win the vote in the spring. Why didn't the President really push for that last fall, when outrage over the draft opinion showed the handwriting was on the wall?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, the President has been a very strong supporter of a woman's right to choose. In your preview, you said, ‘Why is he waiting until after the election, instead of doing it now?' We don't have 60 votes in the Senate. If we could get two more –

Andrea Mitchell. You don't think he could have pushed harder on the Senate last spring?

Speaker Pelosi. You think we would have gotten 60 – ten Republican votes? Do you think we would have gotten ten Republicans votes? Oh, come on. Let's – let's – with all due respect –

Andrea Mitchell. Okay.

Speaker Pelosi. The fact is, we need to get two more Democratic votes to push back this – the filibuster, and therefore be able, with 51 votes, to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law. And that will be on the 50th – around the time of the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

When the Court decision came down on Dobbs, we were ready. We were ready with great candidates, with mobilization at the grassroots level, with message discipline for the districts we have to win and for money. We're outraising the Republicans with our candidates. With their dark money, of course, they have endless. We don't need endless. We just will have enough.

Andrea Mitchell. One of the issues that's obviously going to be at stake on this election is democracy and the end of the January 6th investigation.

Speaker Pelosi. Yes.

Andrea Mitchell. If the Republicans take over the House, it dies with the end of this Congress, all their evidence gathered. You stood up to Donald Trump throughout your tenure, ripping his State of the Union speech and standing up and walking out of a Cabinet meeting, a meeting with the leadership. You put him on notice. And now we have seen that you said – on the day of the riot, you said that, if he led the rioters and came up to the Hill, you would have punched him out.

Speaker Pelosi. That's right. I don't even like to talk about him, because it's really a tragedy for our country.

Andrea Mitchell. But you – but you did say you would have punched him out. Tell me about your anger.

Speaker Pelosi. I would have punched him out. I said I would have punched him out. I would have gone to jail. And I would have been happy to do so –

Andrea Mitchell. Would you have done it?

Speaker Pelosi. – for our country. He wouldn't have had the courage to come to the Hill. He's all talk.

But let me just say – say this. The – our democracy is at stake, when you define democracy as integrity of the vote. They want to suppress the vote. They have been doing that for a long time. They want to nullify the results of an election. They're even proposing that, after an election, if they don't like the results, they will change the rules that would have governed that election retroactively. So, you have to – you have to recognize that they are undermining our democracy. And if people think that they can be casual about that, they just don't realize how serious the Republicans are about undermining our democracy.

Andrea Mitchell. Let me ask you that. In one new poll, again, 39 percent of voters say that they would vote for an election denier – and this included some Democrats and independents – if they liked their stance on other issues.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I don't –

Andrea Mitchell. How do you explain that after all these hearings?

Speaker Pelosi. I don't – can't explain it. I think it's a tragedy for our country that people don't value the vision that our Founders had about a democracy, what our men and women in uniform fight for, about freedom and our democracy, here and other places in the world and, again, what that means to our children. We have to give them – many children born now will live into the next century. We have to make sure they have a planet that is safe, that – a democracy that is strong and values that are respected and agreed upon. That's not what – the path that the Republicans are on.

And by the way, Social Security and Medicare, they want to cut that in order to support lifting the debt ceiling. I mean, every age group you can imagine, whether you're children, whether you're women of childbearing age, whether you're seniors and the rest, you are greatly harmed by what they might go out there and do. And they have been very clear about it. ‘Prescription drug, lowering the costs, we will reverse that.'

Andrea Mitchell. Well, let me ask you about January 6th, drilling down on that, and your anger at what was happening in the – in real time.

Speaker Pelosi. Yes. Yes.

Andrea Mitchell. Despite your anger and everything you were going through, you got on the phone with Mike Pence and expressed concern for his safety. Tell me about that conversation.

Speaker Pelosi. The very idea that this mob would be sent by the President of the United States, with a claim that they were going to hang Mike Pence, should tell the public that, yes, our democracy is at stake. He was – we were taken to an undisclosed location. He was still in the Capitol. I was very concerned because the Capitol was being overridden, and the President – the then-President – was not doing anything to stop the horror of it all.

I was concerned that – he said, ‘If I leave, it will cause – attract more attention with my entourage.' The caravan with the Vice President leaving. I myself wondered if he could even trust the Secret Service to take him to a safe place. I don't know. But I do know that he was in danger in the Capitol, and I wanted to be sure that he was protected. He was the Vice President of the United States. We owe him – I mean, it seems so self-evident that the President should have been making those statements, but he wasn't.

Andrea Mitchell. How concerned are you at new testimony, new evidence from the Committee just last week? And from other sources, you know, from some of these trials, that the FBI had early warnings, the Secret Service had warnings, they weren't properly communicated to the leadership. You had your staff hiding under a table for hours with people banging on the door saying, ‘Nancy, Nancy, where are you, Nancy?'

Speaker Pelosi. They were coming for me, too. But the Vice President had a higher profile.

Here's the thing: this Committee is a Committee of this Congress. So it's not a question of, ‘Oh, if the Republicans come in, they are dismantling it.' No, it's a Committee of this Congress. The Members who serve on there are Members of this Congress. A Democrat is not running again. Two Republicans are not even running again. So it's about this Congress. They will get their work done in their own time. I keep my distance from it.

But on that day, they were – look, what they did to our democracy is a terrible thing. People don't value it, I can't answer for that. I know that many people care about how much they're going to pay in taxes. Very wealthy people are pouring money in, because they care more about their tax bill than they care about the defense of our country that needs taxes to pay for it.

But in terms of what they did – see, I'm number two in line to the presidency. That's never going to happen, but nonetheless, I have very strict identification and all the rest because of succession. And I have a lot of security. That the Secret Service would say, ‘We didn't think we had to tell them about her, because she's not our responsibility' is inconsistent with the other aspects of security that I have.

But if – but you would think that they would have told us to protect everybody else. And I will never forgive the people who stormed the Capitol for the trauma that they caused in our young people, our members of the press who were covering that day, our staffers, the maintenance crew, the people who keep the Capitol neat and clean and the way they disrespected them in language and in poo on the floor and the rest of that. This was a disgrace. And the President instigated an insurrection, refused to stop it and as those films show, would not, in a timely fashion, allow the National Guard to come in and stop it. And that is sinful.

Andrea Mitchell. Will you support a criminal referral if he refuses to honor a subpoena?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, that's going to be up to the Committee. Again, I keep my distance.

Andrea Mitchell. Well, it's up to the full House to do the criminal referral.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, it's up to the Committee to make a recommendation, if they decide to, and I don't – I'm not in on that discussion.

But the Department of Justice is doing its investigation. But the fact is, we want to talk about the future. Elections are about the future. And it's about our children, the world they will live in, whether that's a democratic country or an undermined one, a safe planet, whether that's called a hoax, to say we want to protect the planet, whether our seniors are taken care of with Medicare and Medicaid.

And by the way, Senator Scott and Senator Johnson are joining the – Leader McCarthy in the speeches that they've made about Medicare and Medicaid. It's not an entitlement. It's an insurance program people have paid into. They are treating it as if, ‘Well, we could make this optional in the future. Or just cut it off and decide in five years whether we want to continue to do that.'

Andrea Mitchell. Let me raise a tough issue for you.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

Andrea Mitchell. Which is, Members of your own Caucus, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger. They are in tough districts. I know they're in tough fights. But they're talking about generational change, because all the leadership being over 80. The President is, you know, also if re-elected going to be in that category. So let's talk about what Elissa Slotkin said on Meet the Press. I want to play that for you.

[START OF CLIP]

Elissa Slotkin. I have been very vocal, including with my own leadership in the House, that we need a new generation. We need new blood, period, across the Democratic Party, in the House, the Senate and the White House. I think that the country has been saying that.

[END OF CLIP]

Andrea Mitchell. So what do you say to your own Caucus, to these young Members? They're obviously in tough fights. But they want to see the change.

Speaker Pelosi. I say, just win, baby. Just win. If that's what you have to say to win, fine. We will not, in any way, do anything but totally support mobilization-wise, message-wise, money-wise, for those people to win their races.

Yes, we need generational change, of course we do. But, in some cases, there's no substitute for experience. And I think that what we had been through with the legislation under the leadership of President Biden, who has done a spectacular job. He has had a better two years than most presidents that you can name, certainly in the recent generations. He has, again, with the rescue package, with the, most recently, Inflation Reduction package, with the Chips and Science Act, with the PACT Act for our veterans, for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. He has had a remarkable record, if that's part of their – if they are after us –

Look, just win. That's all I'm saying to people. I just want you to win your races, because nothing less is at stake than our democracy. Nothing less is at stake than our planet. Nothing less is at stake than our freedoms, a woman's right to choose. And as has been indicated by the Republicans, other things, contraception. Only nine Republicans voted for us when we said women should have a right to contraception. There's so many things at stake in the election. These are very valued Members of Congress. We respect them for what they believe and what they do. We want them to be re-elected. I don't have any problem with anybody criticizing me.

Andrea Mitchell. Let me ask you one issue of concern to women around the world, and that is, what is happening to women in Iran. We just had a climber who is now heading home and competed in South Korea without her head covered. And Lord knows what's going to happen to her. What can America do to stand by the women of Iran?

Speaker Pelosi. Well the – we can make sure everyone is paying attention to it. We cannot make it – have the regime there say, ‘Oh, America is instigating this.' Because they don't know their own people. This is organic. It is initiated by the women, by the women. And we should take great pride in that.

We have issued some sanctions, as the U.S., some sanctions there. But I think the bright light has to be shed on it.

But how about these women? Aren't they remarkable? Risking their lives in a dangerous situation?

And then, that's really – women around the world are being subjected – in Ukraine, children, 11 years old, are being raped, moms are being raped in front of their children, in front of their parents. The assault on women in Ukraine is something so horrible.

I always wear this ring – this is from Afghanistan – because, as a constant, to keep it close to my heart, the women of Afghanistan, for what they are subjected to there. I mean, women of the world, revolt. There's a story, a short story when I was young – that was a long time ago – that was Revolt of Mother. You know, revolt.

These women in Iran are just so remarkable. But, again, we don't want it to look as if – to give grist to the leadership there, saying this is instigated by America. It isn't. It's their own people. And if they don't want to understand what's happening in their own country, with their own women, then they do follow that line at their peril. But we have to keep showing support for them. There's going to be an initiative at the United Nations Security Council about this. Let's see if everybody – that there won't be a veto of that at the Security Council, condemning them for what they are doing. So we have to use every angle that we can. But again, not to the extent where they will say this is external, rather than indigenous to Iran.

Andrea Mitchell. Madam Speaker, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Andrea Mitchell. Thank you.