production studio and it will be wonderful. >> thank you we will see you next time. thank you.

>> i work for politics and prose. thank you for joining us in our online format for the author events. please click the green button below we are offering five dollars sales we need the purchases to keep the program going. you can ask the author a question by clicking ask a question on the bottom of your screen and also read other people's questions. the author host and audience members and onto the main

event. and then to draw on exclusive interviews and the legislative accomplishments. and with the impeachment. welcome.

now we have 420 people. and everyone in the audience. this is a really great book may be like a day and a half i read it and off line before you could see it it's a pleasurable beach read and to learn about and one of the consequential people of the centuries and to have a document that we need to know about nancy pelosi. i have a million questions and

there is a way do you want to start? >> i am a huge admirer and i appreciate you doing this. >> you've never written about before and this is your first. and you ever these triumphant stories. and to someone that's never done it before. and to meet the expectations.

>> i was totally miserable. i would not recommend it. it reminded me of childbirth in the sense how excruciating it would be and i sure. and this is really hard. and i feel sorry for myself but it's hard to write about. but to be active in politics and making it difficult to finish the book. and then the impeachment was getting underway.

so definitely fulfilling. so looking at politics day in and day out and the things you start to feel you are understanding and those dimensions of american politics. so for us to bring that together with years and years of reporting and writing of women in politics in the way congress works and those willing to put in the magazine.

>> what you say about nancy pelosi would be of however long? >> honestly out of all of the political figures the one that felt big enough for a book. and then could take that deep of a dive into her. i was assigned to profile her for time magazine in 2017. i didn't think she was at interesting frankly but once i got in there. and thinking about her and the themes and characteristics of her career that there are a lot of layers to unpack. and the stuff people don't know about her.

and then coming up with a book to write and then you just have to be obsessed with that. >> always a great person. >> so part of this was in the end she doesn't speak off-the-cuff that much did use separate how difficult the nut to crack that you can actually

crack it with the magazine stor story. >> yes. it is interesting because so much politics is about communication. and with that great political or a tour of our age. and to be thoughtful. and to be robotic politicians. and to say the wrong thing and then to answer any questions because to be engaged in public introspection. and then they also talk about personal anecdotes and there

is an absence of that for public speaking. so it is an occasion for me to request the role of communication politics and to think about what is the relationship. . . . . everythins

and what she's going to get out of whatever the interaction is a. she's much more interested than she is in making you like her or making herself feel good or making an audience abroad. it's about what is that i'm trying to communicate here and how many times do i have to repeat it for you to get the message? >> it's a great point i interviewed cortez whenever interviewed before and it's kind of a shadow of nancy pelosi in some ways a.

she's very vulnerable and open to wonder if you had any occasion to see nancy pelosi do vulnerability at all and i wondered if she ever let herself -- just wondering what it feels like in some ways what she would let you see about what it's like to be a tactically she is, targeted the way she is, mischaracterized the she's a wouldn't say that i got a sense of vulnerability that she let her guard down enough to get a little snippy with me which was nice like she finally felt like i think the generation she comes

from born in 1940, she's not eating-years-old and comes from a much more of a formal air a particularly for women and as you have eluded to as well, you can't separate her the way she carries herself from how she has been treated and turned into this bogeyman as literally republicans need to activate coad called attack of the 50 pelosi where she is a giant stomping on people. when you are the subject of that kind of an onslaught you do sort of build yourself a renowned for

her toughness and discipline and i think that a lot of that comes from just refusing to be vulnerable in public and to let anyone ever see her sweater. >> do you have any sense that there is a any element of today's republican party that she feels she can have some kind of good faith dealing with? >> she's been dealing a lot with the popular blue state governors have been on the frontlines of the response and i recently profiled the governor and he's someone that has gotten to know nancy pelosi a little bit. so i think she is one of these and you hear this a lot from

democrats these days like i miss the old republican party back when they were nice and gentle and you could deal with them. she was literally born into the democratic party. there's never been any doubt about her partisan loyalties and she describes her upbringing that way, it was the catholic church and the democratic party where she came from and there is an amazing anecdote early in the book where she just moved to california with her husband, they had four young children and they would soon have another they just moved from san francisco where she knows nobody and is staying with her mother-in-law which is pretty unpleasant for everyone involved, not that they didn't get along but i don't think anyone wants to live with their mother in law for a long time and they finally find the

perfect place. it's got a yard and play set. as they are about to sign the papers i think, literally turns to the owner and says why are you renting out your house and they say we are moving to washington my husband is accepting a job in the nixon administration and she turns to the real estate representative and says we are not taking it. i refuse to live in a house made available by the election of nixon but she's accomplished a lot of things it's much more about knowing what your convictions are and where you come from and then understanding where the other side is coming from to try to find a way to

meet somewhere in the middle that satisfies both parties and it isn't about can she go get a drink. she's not a politician like the democratic leader in the senate and the connection between human beings. that is the way her politics were. she's more about counting votes and doing those deals. >> host: what is your sense of what she cares about in these stimulus negotiations? democrats are talking all the time about vote by mail protections and making sure whatever happens in november is safe on the level and so forth and it you don't see the leverage that nancy pelosi now

has so how might be his next round of negotiations go given how important those issues seem to be? >> guest: she is always on this i think is fair to say. she's not pulling out enough and then republicans are calling her obstructionists for not immediately getting everything they want so she's got to balance those demands and what you see is she recognizes the urgency of the moment and knows that it has to happen fast and that is hard in a congress as gridlock and acrimonious as this one but she also feels they were put in charge for a reason and deserve a seat at the table so in the early round these

negotiations with the trillion dollar bills they've been passing there was an attempt to go around and cut her out to have what they call the four corner negotiations and she said what, i need to be at that table and i'm willing to be reasonable and give up some of my initial demands but i need to be at that table so that is what she's trying to balance. she is trying to balance. some of the things you've referenced that's something a lot of republican and democratic leaders are squawking about right now and i think she calculated in the last round of negotiations bu that it would become politically impossible to continue to deny that funding so

we do see initially mitch mcconnell take the position that they were not going to bail out the state because they were not responsible enough to put billions of dollars aside for a once in a century pandemic and i think she realized that we are seeing it happen it became unattainable because a lot of now even republican senators and members are saying my state needs this, we can't just say no to this. >> host: do you have the sense that he her power was out for front-end within the caucus? i guess the last time would have been 2017. >> guest: 2016 but not 2018. >> host: do you have the sense

that other than going back and forth between the majority and minority she was never threatened from inside of the caucus? >> guest: there was a fair amount of angst about her leadership during those years in the minority which were thankless a lot of house democrats were very frustrated that they had the same leaders are 13, 15, 17 years and they are now in their upper 70s, early '80s and a lot of people thought it was time for a fresh face and personal ambition and that that sort of post and fair to all the members and also because she had been the subject of so many attacks and they have spenhadto spend hundreds of milf dollars i think at this point in

turning her into this bogeyman that she had become toxic and the sort of republican leaning districts who needed to keep their seats to get the majority and so the feeling was if she wasn't there to be the subject of those attacks there would be better politics that the democrats. what you didn't really hear is i think somebody else could do a better job managing th of manage house, somebody else could do a better job shaping these complex pieces of legislation. that was never the appeal of the challenger in 2016 or others who defend him against her but tried to oust her from the speakership in 2018 it was never what she sees about her job as legislating that it wa but it wf the external factors.

>> is it conceivable they could keep the same leadership team going forward and have someone of equal age showing the white house again i think this is a crystal ball question but is this the last for the team? >> guest: i have a firm policy against making predictions. i don't think that it's been previously reported back in 2018 there was that leadership race where she worked hard to diffuse this. when it came to the vote on the house floor to she has to win over almost everyone in that sort of ideologically diverse

caucus so one of the conditions that she finally accepted to make the deal she agreed three term limit. basically it said she could serve no more than two more terms. she walked into the next one and says i wasn't giving anything away because i signed on to stay for one term anyway. it does reveal that at least at the time and this also by the way i thought about negotiating tactics and this is one of her great tactics is to pretend it's terribly painful to get something up that actually you are not giving up at all because you either didn't mind or you didn't want it in the first

place there is various points in the book you see her in these negotiating postures where she pretends she is giving up something terribly painful when actually she's not. >> host: as i'm watching this master negotiator [inaudible] i think it has. a lot of these tactics came from her experience as a mother as someone who had five children in six years and who by all accounts ran an extremely disciplined household as a friend once said she knew she was destined. i'i am not there yet with my the kids, but if you think about it, toddlers and politicians a lot in common they are narcissistic. but if you can make them feel

like they're ego is being boosted you can get them to do what they want and i do feel like some of these negotiating tactics that i've learned do come in handy. another one i like is the name your price where you say to someone what do i have to do and they name a price that they think is outlandish or impossible to. if you can find a way then you can do it and she says fine and she gets the volunteers to stand around and every 20 minutes they flip it over so the grass can breed and they have no choice

but to say we didn't think you could satisfy the condition that you did so you can do what you want to. >> host: you mentioned she represented san francisco and that is an issue that is very close to her given where she represented a lot of people she knows and she's been around for a while. mitch mcconnell has actually talked in some ways about the outbreak and reminding him of his own experience with polio during the polio outbreak when he was growing up. are there any echoes at all do you think about what we are living through now and also this sort of uncertainty and just this out of control new and scary disease that can be very fatal, but it's just taking over everything?

i wonder if this is something you've ever heard her talk about or if you have seen the parallels? >> guest: i haven't heard of it and she said in the past few bits one of the parallels frankly the republican president at the time was slow to acknowledge the extent of the crisis and that is something we have seen play out abundantly it took years for president reagan to even say so and big part of what she was a part of working with advocates in the community and other members that cared about the issue, she wasn't alone but one of the things she had to do first before she could get help from the victims of the crisis was to convince everybody on both ends of the spectrum but

it was a proble problem that hae dealt with, that the federal government had to grapple with and so one of the things that she did early on was to nail a book to every constituent in her district the surgeon general sort of information, just to get that information out there and then the federal government ended up doing the same thing shortly thereafter to hundreds of millions of households so people understood. in november the democrats keep

the house, nancy pelosi stays on as speaker and donald trump is re- elected. let's say the senate goes to 5050. do you see anything salvageable in this relationship that could actually make a those most powerful figures, do you think they could deal with each other so they don't have to get reelected again do you see anything happening? >> guest: i doubt it only because of the personal relationship. they haven't spoken in months and it's because trump is mad at her for impeaching him.

she's much more cold-blooded about these things. she doesn't have her personal feelings aside whether or not she's going to deal with someone policy and i think it is fair to say the president is not so she spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with him on infrastructure. this is something my donald trump talks about building roads and bridges he kind of sound like a democrat. he wants to build lots of stuff and she kept coming to the negotiating table until he walked away. he was the one who spent his hands down on the table in the middle and say i can't talk to you as long as this witchhunt is going on. so he was willing to deal and she was continued the policy negotiations even as the impeachment and investigations were underway but the president was not so as long as the president is going to there's nothing she can do about that.

she does want people to know not to run out of control of the left wing of the party but to be sensible and get things done so this is part of why she continues to stay we would do a bill on prescription drugs. there are areas of commonality to the negotiations it is fair to say or not ongoing.

>> host: i'm going to proceed. >> could you refresh your browser backs >> i can still see and hear every one fine. >> i am getting a little bit of feedback is all. sorry, everybody, we will have it back up and running quickly. >> host: there you are. there were certainly some more aggressive members who wanted a moved early on. what was it that brought her around? was at the facts of the case or something else or did she feel she had no choice given where the caucus was?

>> guest: she felt it had to be done and particularly the vulnerable members would agree that they had moved to. she didn't like the suggestion that she caved or was following rather than leading that it is fair to say she always thought of as a point person to prevent you have to remember she lived through the clinton impeachment which she thought was a joke, she thought it was basically a political persecution on the part of a republican party that just really for class reasons didn't see bill clinton as a legitimate president and then when she first became speaker in 2007 she faced a constant drumbeat from the left to impeach president bush is so she had code pink protesters every

day camped out in her yard in san francisco and an activist actually ran against her in a primary over this unwillingness to impeach president bush so it wasn't as loud a drumbeat as we had the past couple of years but that was another experience that formed her to stay i didn't get into it then. i think she felt the same way and still does. i think she looks at it now and says we have to do that, the president forced us to do it because of his misconduct but what did it accomplish. if you care about results above everything you really don't see the point of something that you know isn't going to remove the president, you know it's not going to achieve anything tangible. she says in politics you have to know why and hers is the children, the children so she is always going to look at any particular problem and say hell

does this feed a hungry child or improve the lives of workers somewhere or human rights around the world and all the impeachment did in her view was put on a sort of divisive show that this doesn't publish anything. i think she does feel the one thing that it accomplished this in the history books she will always say he has been impeached and can't do anything to change that but other than that she does feel it wa that was kind of pointless. >> host: do you think she has regrets about this? >> guest: she isn't a person that has regrets. she says i don't do that.

>> host: has she always had a personal fondness president bush was someone she used to call a gentleman all the time and still does. they had some moments that she remembers they seem to have something it's no if not a workg relationship at the time it was at least friendly. is there anything about donald trump but she has any use or respect for? >> guest: no, i don't think so. and again i don't speak for her and i don't want to or pretend to. but when i've asked a version of this question she's always careful to say she doesn't disrespect the people that voted for him she doesn't want to be caught in a basket of the portables moment. the moment she finds interesting you can't tell someone they are dating a jerk or they will stop being friends with you. you have to sort of subtly show

them what he is doing so she says i hope these people will realize what the president is doing to them but i don't blame them. >> host: that's an interesting way of looking at it. >> guest: they've had the book since it came out and i want to be perfectly clear the speaker and her staff had no editorial control over the book. she was helpful in terms of getting the interviews and allowing me to interview people around her but it isn't in the

sense that she signed off on the content. >> host: has she ever done in authorized biography? >> guest: she's written a memoir with a co-author and there's a lot of good material that i do in the book, but they've been pretty busy from what i understand. whether she has had a chance to look through it. >> host: i don't need to focus on something a static but there is the lack of subtitle because there is this whole subtitle industrial complex in political books where you have your title and then let's give the whole thing away.

what made people decide to confidently call for lucy with nothing else and that graphic that you use? >> guest: i have to give a shout out to my publisher, henry scholz. i never would have come up with something so hip and stylish. i love the cover i think it is so eye catching and captures her and the tone of the book and a lot of what i've been talking about in the way his cultur of s caught up to her brand of femininity after many years of sort of abuse. ..

that you did as you get into the narrative.

i'm not sure if that's a conscious decision. and i do write in the first person. and just to tell her story in a novelistic fashion. so there's not a lot of direct quote ocean on - - quotations or people that i have interviewed looking back and reflecting i wanted to keep in the moment and experiencing this as that happened. and i've never written a biography before and that all biographers want to be inside and outside the subject at the same time wanting to see things through their eyes also not to have some objectivity and to be somewhat skeptical of the story they tell themselves. people will judge if i did that successfully. >> so moving to q&a.

now throwing at myself at the mercy of technology. >> here is a good one. what is the most surprising thing you learned about speaker pelosi? >> what surprised me about her

is her aggression and frankly. and her boldness. that she is a real risk taker. and willing to get into people's faces i gripping up trumps beach and chasing down a reporter saying don't mess with me. the earliest days of her career she's been willing to get people's faces and stick up for herself. it also comes from her defense of feminism and to advocate

for herself in that way one of the lesser-known stories of her career is the activism on human rights in china. and in 1991 traveled to beijing with her colleagues and then on the last day of the sanction trip, i told the chinese authorities they were too tired to go on a tour of the great wall and they snuck out to tiananmen square, the congressman she was with had smuggled banner in his underwear from hong kong day pulled it out to say those who died for democracy in china then immediately attacked by the chinese police who chased them out of the square and detain some of the journalist that were covering this you

can still see the video. and then caused bodily harm for this full demonstration. and politically as well. and with the democratic leader at the time. and then she encourage your colleagues and then the war resolution against because she believes so strongly as the top democrat on the intelligence committee and has seen the case and she didn't think it called for scrutiny.

she is known for her stealing is fact that boldness which powered to lead we run for leadership are literally no woman ever had the top leadership position and is still the only woman to lead her party in the house of congress and to take on the male-dominated establishment there are only 23 women in the house when she got there out of 435 members. and she said that leadership position who said she could run.

>> did she have a frustration with the obama cabinet with experience? >> that is a big theme of the book of the obama era. she and obama became very close with a lot of mutual respect and trust i want to make it seem like there was a grudge between them but it was confession all coverage that the president didn't pay enough attention. with that consensus and to bring people together that we cannot do this if you don't go along with it and then to keep the filling the process and

that he continued to go to great lengths to get republicans to do things. so a lot of that frustration came from that dynamic. >> and those that they want to ask i will ask. i've been very impressed with speaker's ability of the democratic party even on those challenging issues. what strategies we identify how she is able to do this and this is always a great

strength and with those that preceded her and the house fell apart while paul ryan and john boehner were in charge. that they were unable to keep the caucus together. the caucus is so diverse and more conservative and urban districts. and the democratic cost on - - caucuses form on - - far more diverse. but not quite fractious disagreements from the time

she has become leader to change the rules of the caucus and the house to make it harder and more painful for members to vote against the caucuses position and she wields the carrot stick very expertly. and that she's just disappointed and that feeling is a cute if you cross or you may live to regret it.

that the tips and tricks a word i conclude in a larger sense it is an incredible understanding with that memory for details not only knows who you are with all the members of the house of representatives and to know your spouse and parents and pat sam priorities and issues what caucus you are a member of what might be difficult to do politically. and maintains those relationships to make everybody feel they have been listened to and heard. often times that's all it takes and then to keep them in

that session until they relent. >> i want to recognize we have over 500 people on the attendance list so before i asked the next question thank you to everyone for coming since we're all on computers there is a tendency to buy this on kindle you should do that on politics and prose for some type of ordering thing they can tell you about. thank you for being here. the next question follows on what you were talking about did you talk to nancy pelosi about what it was like to grow been a political family in baltimore?

knowing faces and names in writing thank you notes and im wondering and to talk about her political background and how that was applied. >> absolutely her father was a congressman when she was born and then to become the mayor the old-school urban politics and those important demographics in the city i

definitely thank you can see that old school political style in those legislative tactics. a lot of what i tried to do is refocus attention on her mother that she has always taken pains to say by the influence of her mother and talks very openly of what is interesting how her mother felt stifled and was never able to achieve her dreams because she was a woman and wanted to be an auctioneer and go to law school and market and sell the beauty products she marketed and invented and her husband were not give her a signature so she was shaped with a strong italian-american lady not afraid to get up there is a story once she punched a coworker in the face

she was mad at. and she ran a lot of the political operations for her husband. her name was on the ballot but she ran the democratic club out of the basement they call it that favor file with a would take people's names and refer people to services or into a housing project so her mother was a big part of that work it is very ground-level and grassroots as an urban politician you have to know every precinct you cannot run a campaign with expensive television ads you have to do the work so she still gives to candidates and runs for office it's a way she thinks about

electoral politics down at the ground level her older brother who later became mayor of baltimore was a great friend and mentor to her call that human nature in the raw and i love that description. >> this question has a lot of support from the voters. as nancy pelosi ever been interested in running for president or the senate does that make her more powerful in the house? >> yes and no. there was a time she was up-and-coming in politics when she was new to the house every

once in a while be on a list of potential vice presidential candidates. but she always said she wasn't interested in never dangled hints should be interested in higher office every politician says that it is part of the repertoire is to say no. i first not. that she has been saying that long enough it is believable and is a big part of her power. and the smart observation because it's her members know

she isn't trying to make a name for herself. her predecessor everyone knew he wanted to be president. so as much as he was guarding their interest also had his eye on the next thing and had a personal ambition and a stake of what was going on no member of the caucus thinks she's trying to pass a resume so to tell the members she focused on looking out for their interest. >> this is the last question. majority rules. what kind of access did you get? >> she gave me a series of interviews i have been covering her previously prior

to starting work on the biography. she never invited me in order showed me around her house or introduce me to her family but there is a sense that she has and with the capital press corps but she is not that politician that strikes reporters as colorful and entertaining. so i talk about this in the book that i do look at that fourth wall to talk about the personal feelings and reflections and the reporting process i felt like i never really got inside her head. i observed closely the way she

looked - - works and operates. but because she doesn't engage in public introspection, she is a fundamentally private person. and then to penetrate that. >> it's a great book thank you all for being here. >> come a long way to go up or down a flight of stairs. >> everyone and by the book national treasure and thank you for watching us. >> before we close we thank you all.

and to make lovely conversation. thank you so much. and that patronage to keep us up and running right now. and then options night we are accepting those donations and appreciate everyone that comes in. we have a lot of other great events coming up down the pipeline say well and stay well read and take care.