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media shipping as an incentive and physical stores are closed and we need online purchases in order to bring you the programming that tnt is known for per you can ask author questions by clicking on ask a question near the bottom of your screen, in that box, you can read other people's questions about for the ones you would like to hear answered the most. a reminder and are in person event, the officer host. onto the main event, deeply researched portrait how nancy pelosi, "time" magazine award-winning national political correspondent with an exclusive interview in the extraordinary career from election to congress in 1987 the heard legislative accomplishment which is universal healthcare, to her confrontation with trump and managing of his impeachment. she is joined in conversation by

chief national correspondent of the new york times magazine and author of big game, the nfl in dangerous times. welcome. >> thank you. thank you everyone for coming. >> i guess we are on. >> thank you all for coming, this is molly on the other side of the screen. we have a lot of people here, according to the number of the people on the screen we have 428 people. >> thank you clinton, carter, bush because we know everyone in the audience. thank you for asking me too do this and thank you for being here, it is a really great book and i will tell you i read in the last couple of days and it took me maybe a day and a half and it was a pure pleasure to do, i was telling molly off-line or whatever, before you can cs,

it is a pleasurable read it at the same time it will be a historical thing if you want to learn about the one or two or three consequential people of the century so far politically, you will have a document that will tell you everything that you need to know about nancy pelosi. so as a million questions, i know you do too, what i'm going to do, we will talk and ask questions for about a half-hour and we will turn over to you all for questions and there's a way to ask questions so they can figure out or we will figure it out for you and so forth. but molly do you want to say something off the top or do you want to jump in with the questions. >> thank you so much i'm a huge admirer of your writing and i really appreciate you doing

this. why don't you fire away. it's due the dialogue. >> let's do it. you have never written a book before and this is your first and i assume that you've heard the horror stories that we would like to write a book and you've heard all the tramped of stories of how great the processes, what was it like, did you like doing this, is this something you would recommend to someone who is never done before, didn't exceed expectations, didn't not meet expectations, what was it like. >> it was totally miserable, i would not recommend it, it reminded me of childbirth in the sense that people tell you how excruciating it's going to be and sure, a lot of pain but you don't internalize exactly how that's when to be until you go through yourself, oh my god, this is really hard. people have done much harder

things and i don't feel sorry for myself. it is hard to write a book and it's hard to write a book about a moving target, i was trying to figure out where i was going to end it giving that it's wonderful and she's active in politics and interesting to people but it means she kept making it difficult to finish the book when i was in the process of researching and reporting and interviewing people was right before and leading up to and during when impeachment was getting underway and we felt that was going to be the big story of the 2020 election cycle and maybe not but it was a challenge but definitely very fulfilling. not only that i learned a lot but also when you are bored on politics day in and day out, there are things that you develop in your writing and things that you start to feel

like you are understanding and a lot of dimensions about american politics and for me this is a way to bring a lot of that together years and years of reporting and writing about congress and women in politics in the way the political system works in the congress and also the magazine writer, you write more words than they're willing to put in the magazine. it was great to have 300 pages and spell it all out. >> what would nancy pelosi be the one that would be worthy of however, long this took you? >> honestly of all the political figures i have written about, she was the wonderful big enough for a book and that i really could take that, i was assigned to profile her free time magazine when i started working there in 2017 and at first i was

not that thrilled about the assignment, i did not think she was that interesting. it was only once i got in there and started learning about her and thinking about her and thinking about all of the themes and characteristics of her career that i was starting to think there were a lot of layers to unpack an interesting history and residents and i did not know about her and i actually had a conversation with david a few years ago when i was trying to come up with a book to write and i cannot come up with anything and i said how did you know that you had something that was worthy of a book rather than a long article and he said you just have to be obsessed. it was the subject and i just was obsessed. >> david is a great person for inspiration and to put you in the right headspace or something like that.

you mentioned in the text, part of this was in the text that you imply, she is not a interview, she is not -- she does not make it fun or easy, she does not speak off-the-cuff that much, she's also a private person. how did you separate how difficult a nut she is to crack with the ambitions it takes to know that you can crack the nuts to write an interesting magazine story or a book. >> she is really interesting because so much of politics is about communication. i don't think so ever be considered one of the great political or tours of our age. that is not to say that she is not bright and articulate and

thoughtful and she is a robotic politician that is so stiff because they're terrified of saying the wrong thing that they just repeat themselves over and over and will not answer any questions. but she is not someone who engages in public intersection. she will not tell you all the things she's been thinking about herself, you have to figure her out and she is not a natural storyteller, i think that's part of it too, the compelling political speech to fires do naturally speaking stories and the reading on personal antidotes and their is an absence of that and most of her public speaking. it was an occasion for me too reflect on the role of communication and perception in politics and studying her and thinking about what is the relationship between how a politician is perceived and what they actually do and how much of that are they responsible to and

that is part of our society responsible for and what does this say about the person being perceived, i don't want to be constructionist but we hear about this all the time with the president for example, a lot of the presidents defenders will say people get matted his tweets but look at what he does in the lot of his critics will say no, when he matters just as much as what he does. i don't think there's quite that disjunction in nancy pelosi. as a communicator i would say the thing that you get to understand is results, everything is about what she's going to get about what the interaction is, whether it's an interview or being on television or given a speech at a fundraiser, whatever. she is much more interested in driving a message home then she is to making her like her or

making an audience applaud, it's about what is entering to communicate and how many times do i have to repeat it for you to get the message. >> it's a great point. a couple days ago i interviewed for the first time aoc alexandria ocasio-cortez, who i never interviewed before, they shattered nancy pelosi in some ways, a generation with a very progressive in the house in nancy pelosi runs in her way and aoc is up in her feelings all the time, she is very vulnerable, very open, very millennial, i wonder if you ever had an occasion to see nancy pelosi do vulnerability at all, i wonder if she ever let herselg what it feels like in some ways

and what she would let you see and what it's like to be attacked the way she is and targeted the way she is, mischaracterize the way she's treated and so forth. >> i would not say i got a sense of vulnerability, i did feel like she let her guard down enough to get a little snippy with me which was nice which she finally felt like she could do that. but she is not an emotive person personally, and there's something generational about that, the generation she comes from being born in 1940, she is now 80 years old and comes from a much more formal era, particular for women. i think as you alluded to, you cannot separate the way she carries herself from how she has been treated and turned into the

bogeyman and the punching bag and republicans with the 50-foot pelosi where she's a rampaging giant stopping on people and politics -- i'm not saying any of that is necessarily unfair. i think when you're the subject of the onslaught, you do build yourself a suit of armor. shiva described herself that way, i put on a suit of armor and then i go to bed, you throw punching take a punch. she sees politics as combat and she is renowned for her toughness, her skewing us, her discipline and i think a lot of that comes from refusing to be vulnerable and public and refusing to let anyone ever see her sweat. >> do you have any sense that there is anyone or any element of today's republican party that

she feels that she can have good faith dealing with either in the house or in the administration. >> she certainly like some of the republican governors, she's been dealing directly with a lot other republican blue state who have been on the front line of the coronavirus response, i profile the governor of maryland, who got to know nancy pelosi a little bit, surprising to them both. i think she is one of these, you hear this a lot from democrats, i miss the old republican party, back when republicans were nice and gentle and you could deal with them. but look she was born into the democratic party. there has never been any doubt about her partisan loyalty. and she described her upbringing, it was the catholic church in the democratic party where she came from and there's

an amazing antidote early in the book and she just moved to california with her husband who is in finance, than for young children, they would soon have another and they just moved from san francisco where she knows nobody into staying with her mother-in-law which is pretty unpleasant for everyone involved, not that they didn't like each other but i don't think anyone wants to live with her mother-in-law and they're trying to find out for this large and growing group of there's and they finally find the perfect place, it has a yard, it's a rental and is perfect for their family and their about to sign the papers, literally and turns to the owner and taste why are you renting out your house and she says i'm moving to m washington he's accepted a job in the nixon

administration. i refuse to live in a house made available by the election of richard nixon. she's always been a democratic partisan and not have particular love for the republican party but that said, she has accomplished a lot of things on bipartisan basis throughout her career and i think understanding the way she operates is much more about knowing what your convictions are, having a very firm tens of your values and where you come from an understated where the other side is coming from and trying to find a way to meet somewhere in the middle that satisfies both parties, it is not about can she go get a drink with john weiner, can she go with mitch mcconnell, she's not about a politician like chuck schumer, the democratic leader in the senate is about a smoothing relationship and action between human beings and i think that's

not the way her politics work, she is about counting both in doing the deal. >> what your sense of what she cares about right now on this ongoing stimulus negotiation. and it strikes me, democrats are talking all the time and vote by mail, elections protections, just making sure that no water happens in november is safe on the level and so forth, you don't see these lovers that nancy pelosi now has, they've never come out, what is your sense of how the next round of negotiations would go especially given those two important issues being a democrat. >> it is been interesting to watch, she always is on a tight rope. but it is a high wire act for her and you have the left saying

she's not pulling enough against the republicans and republicans calling her an obstructionist for not immediately giving them everything that they want. and she has got to balances competing demands, she recognizes the urgency of the moment. she knows action has to happen fast enough hard in the congress of gridlock and acrimony as this one. and she also feels that the american people put the democrats in charge of the house of representatives for reason. therefore they deserve a seat at the table. in the early rounds of these negotiations towards the trillion dollar bill that the past, there was an attempt to go around and mitch mcconnell did originally not agree to her demand to have what they call for corner negotiation between the republican and democratic leaders of the house and senate with the white house. and she said look, i need to be at the table, i need to be part

of this in a reasonable and give up my initial demand but i need to be at the table. i think that what she's doing going forward. some of the things that you reference, something like this, funding for state and local government, that is something that is a lot of republican and democratic leaders out there and localities and then think she calculated in the last round of negotiations that it would become politically impossible to continue to deny that funding. we do now seem mitch mcconnell take up the position that they weren't going to be about the state because it was a states problem for not being responsible enough to put billions and billions of dollars aside for a century. i think she realizes, were seen to happen that it be came

politically untenable because even republicans senators and members are saying that my state needs as, we cannot just say no to it. >> you have a sense of her power was ever threatened in the caucus, probably the last time would've been 2017. tim ryan of ohio, did they actually run against her i know people were talking about it. >> he did in 2016 but on 2018. >> some other people talked about a comedy of a sense of going back and forth between the majority and the minority, which ever threatened from inside the caucus? >> there was a fair amount of inks during her relationship during the minority which were really thankless for the democratic caucus, the house democrats were frustrated that they had the same leaders for

13, 16, 17 years and that these leaders are in their upper 70s, early '80s and a lot of people thought it was time for a fresh face. for reasons of perception, mostly and for reasons of personal ambition. they felt that they should never turn to move up the ladder and because it was frozen in place by the top leadership, it was not fair to a lot of members with great potential for leadership and also because he is in the subject of so many attacks, because the republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars i think at this point, and she had become politically toxic for particularly democrats and republican leaning district who needed to keep their seats to get the majority and so the feeling was, if she were not there to be the subject of those

attacks, there would be better politics of the democrats. someone else could do a better job managing, i think someone else could do a better job shaping the complex pieces of legislation, that was not the appeal of a tim ryan who challenged her in 2016 or seth who did not run against her but tried to outstrip from the speakership in 2018, it was never about what she sees as her job which is legislating, it was external factors. >> to think of things go well for democrats in november and democrats keep the house, is it conceivable that they can keep the same leadership team going forward inviting wins and they could have equal age in the white house and status quo, again, this is a crystal ball thing, this is probably the last hurrah for this team?

>> i don't know and i am a firm policy of making predictions. one bit of reporting in the book, i don't think it's been previously reported is back in 2018, there was a leadership where she worked really hard to defuse the challenge. she could afford to lose less than 10% of the caucus on the house floor. in order to be elected speaker again, she would have to win over almost everyone in the large unruly etiologically and demographically diverse democratic caucus. and so one of the conditions that she finally accepted to make the final deal to get the votes, she agreed to a term that would force it down in 2022, but basically it said she could serve no more than two more

terms in the next one and in the book she walked into her next class and said i wasn't giving anything away because they only plan to stay for one term anyway. who knows if that is change sense and but it does reveal at least at the time, this also by the way, i learned a lot about negotiating tactics from nancy pelosi, this is one of her tactics, to pretend that it is terribly painful to give something up that actually are not giving up at all because you did not mind giving it up or you did not want in the first place, these various points where you see her in the negotiating postures were she pretends that she is giving up something terribly painful and actually she is not. >> as i'm watching this negotiator and studying her in a parent of three on kids. >> i really think it has.

>> i think a lot of the negotiating tactics came from her experience as a mother and someone who had five children and six years and who by all accounts ran an extremely disciplined household, there is a friend of nancy pelosi that said she knew she was destined for political success while holding their own laundry. that is a major goal but i'm not there yet with my three kids. but if you think about it, tollett rulers and politicians have a lot in common, they're both narcissistic, maniacs. but if you can make them feel like their ego, then you can get them to do what you want. so i do feel like some of the negotiating tactics that i have learned from watching nancy pelosi do come in handy when you're dealing with children, there is a big concession and another one that i like is the

name your price where you stated, what do i have to do to get you to give me ask and they named a price that they think is outlandish or impossible and they said sure, we don't want to let you put that on the national mall but if you can find a way to lift up the quilt every 20 minutes so the grass can breathe then we will do it, she says okay fine, she gives the volunteers to stand around and every 20 minutes they built the quilt so the grass can breathe, they have no choice to say we did not think you could satisfy the condition but you did so we have to give you what you want. >> this is interesting, i was thinking about this and she represented san francisco, that was an issue that is very close to her given what she represented a lot of people that

she knows and she's been around for a while and was doing this in the 80s. mitch mcconnell has talked in some ways about covid outbreak in reminding him of his own experience with polio during the polio outbreak when he was growing up. are there any echoes between what were living through now and the uncertainty in the out-of-control of having a new and scary disease that can be very fatal in that it's taking over everything. i formulated this into a question but i'm wondering if it's something that you've ever heard her talk about or she had seen any parallels at all. >> i've not heard her make the comparison and i haven't heard everything she said in the past few weeks but one of the parallels frankly, the republican president at the time was very slow to acknowledge the extent of the crisis and that is

something that we see play out abundantly in the current situation and at the time it took years for president reagan even as a hiv or aids, a big part of what she was a part of working with advocates for the gay community or other members who cared about the issue, she was not alone but one of the things that she had to do first before she could get help for the victims of the crisis was to raise awareness of the crisis and that it was a problem that had to be dealt with that the federal government had to grapple with. one of the things that she did early on was to mail a booklet to every constituent in her district of the surgeon general information about -- and just

around the disease, you cannot get it from hugging, you cannot get it from a toilet seat, whatever into get the information in the federal government ended up doing the same thing shortly thereafter and sending hundreds of millions of households information packet so that people understood in the states could proceed to respond. >> this could be in a category am not going to ask you to make a prediction but all present hypothetical in a hobby take a swing at it. in november, the democrats keep the house, nancy pelosi stays on the speaker in donald trump is reelected. let's say the senate goes 5050 and technically pens or whoever the vice president or whoever you decide, do you see anything saw usable in the relationship that could actually make those

two powerful figures in washington, is there anything, do you think they could deal with each other, do you think there is a middle ground and there is a political position to get reelected, do you see anything happening potentially between the two of them? >> i doubt it only because of the personal relationship, they have not spoken in months and not because trump is matter her for impeaching him. she is much more cold-blooded about these things, she does not let her personal feelings decide whether or not she is going to deal with someone on policy and she does have a firm set of policy convictions which is fair to say the president is not. she spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with him on infrastructure, this is something when donald trump

talked about building roads and bridges, he sounded like a democrat and he wanted to spend a lot of money and build a lot of stuff and she kept coming to the negotiating table until he walked away, he was one to slam his hands down on infrastructure negotiation ascetic cannot talk to her as long as the witch-hunt is going on. he was willing to deal and she was willing to continue the policy negotiations even as impeachment all the investigations were underway but the president was not. as long as the president is going to stiff arm her, there is nothing she could do about it. i think as a matter of politics and electoral politics is obsessed with train to show the american people that democrats are interested in government so the house is passing all these bills, hundreds of them that are sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk because she does want people to know that she wants to

spensend the message that she cn trust the democrats to be responsible to in the partisanship and gridlock and not to run out of control of the left-wing of the party and the desires but to be sensible and actually get things done. so i think this is why she continues to stay and you would do a bill on infrastructure and prescription drugs, there are areas of commonality and the rhetoric but the negotiations are fair to say are not ongoing. >> i see a picture of you, i don't see the live version of you, i don't see if i'm the only one, i can hear you. >> molly can you refresh your browser. >> sure, i can see it here. >> i can too, i'm getting a couple -- started to halt the

conversation but will have it up and running very quickly. >> thank you. >> you mentioned impeachment. how did nancy pelosi get to impeachment, she was a hold on for a while and there was aggressive members of her caucus who wanted to move pretty early on on this impeachment, what was it that brought her around, the ukraine case or something else or did she feel like she had no choice given where the caucus was? >> i think it was both i think she felt it had to be on the merit in the position that the caucus, the vulnerable member of the caucus politically had moved to preach she did not like the suggestion that she caved or she was following in leading the caucus. but i do think it's fair to say

that it was a pointless endeavor, you have to remember, she lived through the clinton impeachment which she thought was a joke, that was the word that she used, it was basically a political persecution on the part of the republican party that really for class reasons did not see bill clinton as a legitimate president. and when she first became speaker in 2007, she faced a constant to impeach president bush. so she had protesters roaming the halls of congress every day and camped out in her yard in san francisco in the anti-war activist ran against her in a primary over the unwillingness to impeach president bush so it was not as loud as we had the past couple of years but that was another experience that informed her to say i did not given then because it would be

pointless. i think she felt the same way and i think she still feels that way and she looks at impeachment in the rearview mirror and said we had to do it, the president forced us to do it because of his conduct but what did it accomplish, nancy pelosi and care about results of everything, you really don't see the point and know that it will not remove the president and is not going to achieve anything tangible. she says in politics you have to know your wife and her why is the children, the children, the children. she is always going to look at any particular political problem and say how does this feed a hungry child or improve the lives of workers somewhere or human rights around the world and all impeachment did in her view is put on a device that it did not accomplish anything. she would say -- i think she

does feel the one thing that it accomplished was to put an ashtray next to president trump team in the history books. she always says he's been impeached and they can't do anything to change that. but other than that she does feel pointless. >> do think she has regrets about this? >> she is not a person who has regrets. quite literally, you can ask her, i've asked her many times. i said do you regret and she says i do not do that. i don't do regret and i don't do your. >> is there anything -- she always had a certain personal -- president bush was someone she would call a gentleman all the time, she still does, they had some moments that she remembers and is not a working relationship at the time, it was some kind, is there anything about donald trump that she has

any use for or any respect for? >> no, i don't think so. again, i don't speak for her and i don't want to or pretend to. but when i ask her version of the question, she is or is careful to say that she does not disrespect the people that voted for him. she does not want to be caught in a basket of deplorable moments in the metaphor that i find entertaining, did you ever know someone who is dating a jerk. and you cannot tell that person that they're dating a jerk or they will stop being friends of the parade you have to try to show them what he is doing to them, she says i hope these people will realize what the president is doing to them but i do not blame them. >> it is interesting way of looking at a. >> have they read the book --

what was the last round of fact checking and you have any sense that they no attendant? >> they had the book since he came out, i want to be perfectly clear that the speaker and her staff had no editorial control over, it is my book in my characterization, she was helpful in terms of getting me interviews and allowing me to interview a lot of people around her and this is not in a sense that she signed off on the content. >> has he ever done an authorized biography? >> she has written a memoir with the writer in there is a lot of good material in there that i drawn the book. but they've had the book since it was in galleys and they have

been pretty busy from what i understand. whether she has had a chance to live through it -- i continue to report on her. >> i don't need to focus on something static, the cover is great and i love the lack of subtitle. there is a subtitle industrial complex and political books where you have your title and then let's get the game away and the next light in the endless subtitle. i know that there's other graphics people and what made you to confidently call it nancy pelosi with nothing else in that graphic you used? >> first of all i have to give a shout out to my publisher, the designer came up with this cover

design and i never would've came up with something so hip and stylish, i love the cover, i think it's capturing and it captures her in the tone of the book and it captures of what i've been talking about of ways that culture has caught up in many years of abuse. but also, everyone knows what it's about from the title. >> i cut people a lot of clock who need to communicate why the topic they're writing about is significant. and if i write about a lesser-known figure i would need a subtitle to figure this is the man that detonated the comic bomb in mars. that one should be pretty famous, everyone knows who she is, there is only one person you're talking about and for all of his wonderful qualities it is her husband.

i think i like the simplicity of the cover design, i also think it speaks for herself and that she is a figure is already plenty famous enough, people already know who she is when she picks up the book. >> this is a nice luxury. what would you decide to have -- what made you decide to have an unintrusive voice in the book because there's a lot of people who write profiles and interviews like you and i do and you have a sense of what it's like in the room with them, and talk to them in the author's voice and you can talk about your own experience, you really stand back, i'm wondering how

you decided to write in the voice that you did and develop over time as were getting into the narrative. >> i'm not sure, even if it was a conscious decision, as a profile writer and a speechwriter i write in the first person, i think it can help bring the reader into the story and in this case i wanted to tell her story and an awful shtick fashion, i wanted to feel like storytelling more than work of reporting and and there was not a lot of a direct quote in the book in contemporaneous and there's not a lot of people that i've interviewed looking back and requesting because they wanted to keep it in the moment and i feel like they were experiencing as they are happening but it is tricky, i've never written a book or

biography and its interesting problem that all biographers are wanting to be inside and outside your subject at the same time. in wanting to see things through their eyes but also wanting to be able to have objectivity in distance and perceived by others and to be skeptical of the stories they tell themselves which we all do. so people will judge whether or not i did that successively but that's whatever's trying to achieve to do. >> i had a text that said i am moving to q&a when we get a chance. so, we will turn this overturn audience and were going to take questions let's see, is there some way you can ask questions, i'm throwing myself at the mercy

of technology hoping tomorrow and then the very near future, there will be questions. >> there is a question and if you click on it, the list comes up. >> here we go. this is from martina what is the most surprising thing that you learned about speaker pusey? >> her to say at this point, one thing that really surprised me about her was her aggression, her assertiveness, she came up at a time where it was not really culturally acceptable for women to be strong and assertive in aggressive. she is a real risk taker. she is a gambler and she's

willing to put herself out there and willing to get into people's faces. i think this is familiar from ripping up trump speech in chasing down a reporter and getting the president saying don't mess with me. this goes all the way back to the earliest days of her career, she's been willing to get in people's faces and stick up for herself. it comes from her sense of feminism to advocate for herself in that way. one of the lesser-known stories from her career in the book is about her activism on human rights in china and this is someone in 1991 traveled to beijing with her colleagues in the last day of their trip, they

told the chinese authority, they were too tired to go on their tour of the great wall and they snuck out the hotel and took a taxi in one of the congressman who she was with played pewter on the dukes of hazard, he had smuggled the banner in his underwear from hong kong and they pulled it out and it said for those who died for democracy in china. and they were immediately attacked by the chinese and police who chased him out of the square and became some of the journalists who were covering this, you can still see the video of this incident. she did bodily harm in order to stage this very bold demonstration for what she believed in. and politically as well, back in 2003 when a lot of the top democrats including the democratic house leader at the

time and including people like hillary clinton and john kerry thought that it would be bad politics with the iraq war and she came out and urged her colleagues to be against it and she went against the war resolution against her own leadership and she believes that the war was the wrong thing to do in the top democrat on the intelligence committee, she seen the case for the word that the administration was presenting and she did not think it stood up to scrutiny. she's known for her toughness, but that boldness which empowered her to where she is today for leadership when no woman had a top leadership position in either house of congress, she still the only woman to lead her party in a house of congress and she has to take on the male-dominated

establishment to do that, there's only 23 women in the house of representatives when she got there in 1987 out of 435 members. and when she said she se decideo take the leadership position through the grapevine that the men empower were saying who said she could run. she's always been someone who said i don't need your permission, i will do this because i believe i can do it. >> this is a question from therese, did pelosi have a frustration with obama and his cabinet and relative experience? >> yes. i think that is a big theme of the chapter of the book of the obama era and she and obama became very close, they have a lot of mutual respect and trust

and they don't want to make it seemed like there is any grudge between them but it was the theme of congressional coverage throughout the obama years the democrats in the house and senate never felt like the president paid enough attention or particular great negotiator when it came to dealing with the republicans and it felt like he give up too much upfront. he made his promise of bipartisanship and consensus in healing the country bringing people together and the republicans realized, he cannot do this if we don't go along with it and we can keep them from fulfilling the promise. and hurt him politically, she really is that a long time before he did so she was frustrated that he continued to go to great lengths to try to get republicans to do things with him when she didn't think they were negotiating and she didn't think they had any intention of cooperating so a lot of the frustration came from

that dynamic. >> using my expert vote counting myself, i see the question that has the most votes that they want me too ask i'm going to ask. this is liz, i've been very impressed with speaker pelosi's to bring together the democratic party even on the most challenging issues, the cash hurting ability, what strategy did you identify and how she is able to do this so effectively. >> that's a great question and it's one i spent a lot of time thinking about. it's been a great strength. it stands in great contrast to the republican speaker who preceded her. the house more or less fell apart when paul ryan were in charge of the republican caucus, the entire house the speaker is. they are unable to keep their caucus together but a lot of people said the caucus is so diverse, you have those

unreasonable freedom caucus and you have people from the liberal district and were conservative district, urban, rural but the democratic caucus is far more diverse than the republican caucus, both demographically and illogically and yet there have been some quite fractious disagreements between the caucuu hear me. >> you're good i am sorry. >> but from the time she became democratic leader, she has ways put a premium on party discipline, change the rules of the caucus in the house to make it more painful for members to vote against the caucuses position and she can be very tough in that regard but i think similar to her mothering

strategy, she sticks very expertly and she's very good at letting people know that she's not mad at you, she's just disappointed in the feeling of disappointment is acute, you may live to regret it. so you know when it comes down to it, i mentioned these negotiating strategies that she uses in their certain concrete tips you can point to but what i conclude in a larger sense is that it really is an incredible understanding of human nature on her part. she has an incredible memory for detail and for people, never forgets a face, always knows not only who you are, i cannot only tell the part the members of house of representatives and all of their names and where they come from. she not only knows al frappuccino as your spouse and your pets and what your priority

are and what you happen to be in and what the makeup of your district is and what might be difficult for you to do politically. she has all of that in a foul on her head and she knows all of her people, she maintains his relationships, she makes everybody feel they have been listened to and heard and a lot of times on solid takes, she is in less time to listen to people and where the amount and she's trying to talk someone into something, she will keep them in the negotiating session until they relent because she's outlasted them. >> i want to recognize we have over 500 people on our attendance list. before i open up the next question i want to thank everyone for coming and there will be a separate pitch for

this but since were all in computers, there will be won this and you're not permitted to do that, you should do it on politics and prose online or in ordering thing that they can tell you about. thank you all for being here in the next question follows of what you are talking about, do talk to nancy pelosi about what it was like growing up in a political family in baltimore and the reason i heard an echo from what you are answering, knowing faces and names in writing thank you notes and so forth it's an old-school political way and i'm wondering whether she talked about what her political background like and how it was applied to running congress. >> absolutely, her father was a congressman from baltimore when

she was born and by the time she was seven he became the mayor of baltimore and this is old-school democratic machine urban politics wears there's patronage, favored trading, all the different demographics in the city and you have to take court to that person. i definitely think you can see a lot of the old-school political style in the legislative tactics that she used. at the same time, a lot of what i try to do in the early chapters is refocus attention on her mother. i think it is so natural to see the political heritage because were she went to the family business, she has always taken pain to stay that she was shaped equally by the influence of her mother and she talks very openly which i think is interesting how she felt stifled and her mother was not able to achieve her dream and goals because she was a woman and her mother wanted to

be an auctioneer, go to law school, wanted to market and sell beauty products that she invented and patented. and her husband would not give her signature in which women needed at the time to do things like that. she was very shaped -- not to be stereotypical but the mother was a very strong assertive and talented lady and not afraid to get in people's faces, once she punched a poll worker in the face who she was mad at. and she ran a lot of the political operation for her husband. she never got the credit and her name was on the ballot, she was the one running the woman's democratic in the constituent service operation, they call it the favor while where they would take people, names, write them on, refer people for services to get into a housing project or into the hospital or a job or

whatever. so her mother was a big part of that work, the last thing i was here about her political and her teach, it's very ground-level and grassroots. if you're an urban politician, you have to know every precinct. you can't run a campaign with a bunch of extensive television ads. you have to get out there with the pavement and the work. it's still the advice she goes to the candidate that she recruited to run from office and it's still the way she thinks about electoral politics is precinct by precinct, block by block at the ground level, her older brother who became mayor of baltimore and was a great friend and mentor call that human nature and the raw, i love that description of ground-level politics. >> i think we have time for a couple more, you can text me if

we should wrap it up. and this question has a lot of support from the voters from jessica or whatever, has nancy pelosi ever been interested in running for president or the senate, do you think that makes her more powerful in the house? >> no and yes. she has never -- there was a time when she was up-and-coming in politics when she was nude to the house and every once in a while she would be on a long list of vice presidential candidates but she always said she was not interested, she has never dangled any hints that she might be interested in higher office, every politician says is, it's part of the roof ridge were, are you just looking at

the next round of the ladder of course not, for the great people of the fifth district and so on, i think she's been saying that for long enough the becomes believable and it's a big part of her power, it's a very smart observation by jessica because her members no that if she is not trying to make a name for herself, she is not -- her predecessor as leader of the democrats, everyone knew that she wanted to be president, he was going to run for president again in 2004 and everyone knew as much as he was guarding their interest in running the caucus in the house, he also had his ion the next thing andy had a personal ambition and steak and what was going on that diverted his focus. she never had that, no member of her caucus thanks she is trying

to pat her resume so she can seek the next round upon her ladder so that gives her a lot of credibility and telling her members and she's focused on their interest. >> i've been told by the last question, i'm just gonna go with majority rules, 13 people have voted for this . . . and she has good relationships

with the capitol hill press corps but isn't the kind of politician that strikes as colorful and entertaining and so, we talked about this a little bit in the book. i do sort of break the wall and talk about my first personal feelings and reflections about the recording process and i never felt like i got inside her head in that way. i felt like i observed her very closely and got to understand the way she works and operates, but because she isn't someone who engages in the public intersection of she is a fundamentally private person. >> thank you all for being here.

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