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buy the book, our physical facilities are closed and we need the on-line sales. you can ask the author a question, click on ask the question near the bottom of the screen. in the box that pops up, look at other people's questions and vote for the ones you'd like answered the most. during the in-person event, that can't see on the screen we welcome you-- and in this on nancy pelosi, the political correspondent tracks pelosi's extraordinary career, congress in 1987 through her legislative accomplishments such as universal health care, and the military, and with president trump and the impeachment.

and mark lebowitz, author, welcome molly and mark. >> thank you, beth. >> great to be with you. >> i guess we're on. that's great. i like this. we're here, yes thank you all for coming, i'm mark lebowitz and this is molly on the other side of the screen. first of all, we have a lot of people here, according to the number on bottom of the screen, 428 people. >> and probably mostly russian bots, right. >> some of them might be. but first of all, thank you president and mrs. obama and clinton and carter and bush for coming and for all we know, everyone in the audience. anyway, thank you for asking me to do this and thank you for being here. this is a really great book and i will tell you that i've read it the last couple of days, it took me like maybe like a day and a half, and it was like a pure pleasure to do and i was just telling molly off, i guess

off-line before you could see us, i hope, it's both a really pleasurable kind of beach read kind of thing, but at the same time, it will be one of those historical things where if you want to learn about, you know, probably one of the two or three most consequential people of this century so far politically, you'll have a document that will tell you everything you need to know about nancy pelosi. and so i have a million questions and i know you do, too. what i'm going to do. we're going to talk about-- i'm going to ask questions for a half hour and we'll turn it over to you for questions. and there's a way to ask questions to figure it out and we'll figure it out and so forth. but, molly, do you want to say something off the top or do you want me just to jump in with a question, i've got a bunch. thank you so much, mark. i'm a huge admirer of your writing and really appreciate

you doing this. but, yeah, why don't you fire away. let's just do the dialog. >> let's do it. all right, so you have never written a book before and this is your first, and i assume you have heard horror stories what it's like to write a book or the-- you've heard all of these triumphant stories how great the process is. what was it like? i mean, did you like doing this? is it something you would recommend to someone who's never done it before? what was-- i mean, did it exceed expectations? did it not meet expectations? what was it like for you? >> it was totally miserable. i would not recommend it. it definitely reminded me of childbirth in the sense that people tell you how excruciating it's going to be and you sort of go, oh, sure, yeah, a lot of pain, but you don't really internalize exactly how that's going to be, not until you go through it yourself. and oh, my god, this is really hard. you know.

people have done much harder things, exaggerate and i don't feel story for myself. and it's hard to write a book and hard to write about a moving target. i was constantly trying to figure out how to end it the wonderful characteristic of my subject she's still active in politics and therefore interesting to people, but it means that she kept making it difficult to finish the book, right when i was in the process of researching and reporting and interviewing people, was write before and leading up to and then during when impeachment was getting underway and you know we thought that would be the big story of the 2020 election cycle. now it looks like maybe not. but it was a challenge, but definitely very fulfilling. i really feel like-- not only did i learn a lot from if, but also, as you know, when you report on politics day in, day out. there are themes that you sort of develop and find in your

writings. things that you start to feel like you're understanding in a lot of dimensions about american politics and so for me, this was a way to bring a lot of that together. a way to bring together sort of years and years of reporting and writing about congress, about women in politics, about the way the political system works and the congress works. and also as a magazine writer, you always write more words than they're willing to put into the magazine. and have 300 pages and spell it out. >> what did you decide that nancy pelosi was the one that would be worthy of however long this took you? >> well, honestly, of all of the political figures i have written about, she was the one that felt big enough for a book, big enough and significant enough that i really could take that deep of a dive into her, as i write about in the book, i was assigned to profile her for "time" magazine when i started working there in 2017, and at

first i sort of wasn't that thrilled about the assignment didn't think she was that interesting, frankly. once i got in there and started learning about her and thinking about her and thinking about all of the, again, sort of themes and characteristics of her career, i thought there were a lot of layers to unpack, a lot of history and resonance and just stuff people didn't know about, i didn't know about her. and i actually, i had a conversation with david maranis a few years ago, and i tried to come up with a theme for a book and how did you know you had something worthy of a book rather than like a long article. he said you have to be obsessed with it and that is the first subject i was obsessed. >> david is a great person for both inspiration and to put you

in the right head space for something like this. i would say, i mean, so you mentioned in the text, or maybe part of this was, i think, in the end of, but also in the text you implied a number of-- she's not a great interview. she's not, i mean, not a great-- she didn't make it fun sore doesn doesn't-- or doesn't make it-- she doesn't speak off the cuff and she's a private person. how did you separate how difficult a nut she is to crack with the ambition it takes to absolutely know that you can crack the nut and not to -- to write an interesting magazine story and/or book. >> she's interesting because so much of politics is about communication and i don't think she'll be considered one of the great political orators of our

age, not that say that she's not the thoughtful and-- or terrified of saying the right thing they repeat themselves over and over and won't answer questions, but she isn't someone who engages in public introspection. she's not going to tell you all the things she's been thinking about herself. you sort of have to figure her out and she's not a natural story teller. that's part of it. a lot of compelling political speech definers, are reeling off anecdotes. there's an absence of that in most of her public speaking. so it was really kind of an occasion for me to reflect on the role of communication and perception in politics, in studying her, thinking about, well, what is the relationship between how a politician is perceived and what they actually do? and how much of that are they responsible for, how much of

that is sort of our society responsible for? how much does it say about the person being perceived? i don't want to get too deconstructionist on you, but we hear about this all the time with the president, for example, right? a lot of the president's defenders say, well, people get mad at his tweets, but look at what he does and a lot of his critics say, no, what he says matters just as much as what he does. so i don't think there's quite that disjunction in nancy pelosi, but the other thing about her as a communicator, i would say is that i think the thing that you really get to understand about her is that everything with her is about results. everything is about what she's going to get out of whatever the interaction is, whether it's an interview, whether it's being on television, giving a speech at a fundraiser, whatever. so she is just much more interested in driving a message home than she is in making you like her or making herself feel

good or even like making an audience applaud. it's about what is it i'm trying to communicate here and how many times do i have to repeat it for you to get the message. >> right. it's just, it's a great point. i mean, i-- a couple of days ago actually i interviewed for the first time oac, alexandra ocasio-cortezes. and she is very, as she said, up in her feelings all the time. she's vulnerable, open, millennial that way. i'm wondering if you had an occasion to see nancy pelosi do vulnerability at all? and i wonder if she ever let herself-- i mean, i'm sort of wondering

what it feels like in some ways, and what she would let you see, what it's like to be attacked the way she is, targeted the way she is, mischaracterized the way she is and so forth? >> i would nt say i got a sense of vulnerability from her. i eventually felt she let her guard down enough to get a little snippy with me, which is nice, finally felt like enough for that. but you know, she is not an emotive person certainly and i think you're right there's something generational about this, and she was born in 1940 and she's now 80 years old and she's from a much more formal era, particularly for women. as you alluded to as well, you can't separate her, the way she carries herself from how she has been, has been treated, how

she's been turned into this bogeyman, this punching bag, this literally republicans made an ad called attack the 50 foot pelosi, a rampaging giant like stomping on people. and so, and like, look, politics ain't bean bag, i'm not saying that that is necessarily unfair, but when you're the subject of an onslaught you build yourself a suit of armor. she's described herself that way, i put on a suit of armor, and go into battle and you throw a punch and take a punch. she very much sees politics as combat and she's renowned for her toughness, for her steeliness, for her discipline, and i think that a lot of that comes from just refusing to be vulnerable in public and refusing to let anyone ever see her sweat. >> right. do you have any sense that there is anyone in today's-- or any element of today's

republican party that she feels that she could have some kind of good faith feeling with, either in the house or, you know, in the administration? >> well, i mean she certainly likes some of the republican governors and dealing directly with a lot of the popular blue state republican governors who have been on the front lines. coronavirus response. i recently profiled the governor of maryland, larry hogan and he's gotten to know nancy pelosi a little bit i think surprisingly to them both. and some of the democrats say i miss the old republican party back when republicans were nice and gentle and you could deal with them. but look, she was literally born into the democratic party. there's never been any doubt about her partisan loyals. and she describes her upbringing that way. she said it was the catholic

church and the democratic party where she came from and there's an amazing anecdote early in the book where she was-- she just moved to california with her husband to the-- who is in finance. they had four young children, they would soon have another and just moved from san francisco where she knows nobody and she is 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 anybody wants to live with their mother-in-law for a long period of time and they're trying to find a house for this growing brood of theirs. they find the perfect place, a yard, a swing set and rental and perfect for their family. as they're about to sign the papers, i think, literally, turns to the owner and says, so, why are you renting out your house? and the owner says, well, we're moving to washington. my husband is accepting a job in the nixon association and

we're so excited and she turned to the real estate broker, she said i refuse to stay in a house made available by the election of richard nixon. she's been a democratic partisan and not have particular love for the republican party. but that said, she has accomplished a lot of things on a bipartisan basis throughout her career and i think that understanding the way she operates, it's much more about knowing what your convictions are, having a very firm sense of your values and where you come from, and then understanding where the other side is coming from and trying to find a way to meet somewhere in the middle that satisfies those parties. it isn't about like, oh, can sheep go get a drink with john boehner or schmooze with mitch mcconnell. she's not a politician like chuck schumer, the democratic leader in the senate is more about the schmoozing relationship and interaction

between human beings and that's not the way her politics works. she's much more about counting votes and doing those deals. >> what is your sense of what she cares about right now in this sort of ongoing stimulus negotiations? i mean, it strikes me that the democrats are talking all the time about vote by mail, about election protection, just sort of like just sort of making sure that whatever happens in november is safe, on the level and so forth and yet you don't see these things-- you don't see the leverage that nancy pelosi now has ever come out. i mean, what is your sense of how these next rounds of negotiations might go, especially given how important those two issues seem to be to democrats. >> yeah, it's been interesting to watch. i mean, she always is sort of on this tightrope, i guess you could say. it's a high wire act, you have

the left saying she's not putting out enough against the republicans and the republicans calling her an obstructionist for her not giving them everything they want. she was competing demands and what she sees is, she recognizes the urgency of this moment and that action has to happen fast, and that's hard in a congress as gridlocked and acrimonious as this one, but she also feels that the american people put the democrats in charge of the house of representatives for a reason and therefore, they deserve a seat at the table. so i think in the early round of some of these negotiations toward these massive trillion dollar bills they've been passing, there was an attempt to kind of go around here and cut her out and mitch mcconnell didn't initially agree to her demands having four corners.

and she said, look, i need to be at that table and i need to be part of the discussion and i'm willing to be reasonable and give up some of my initial demands, but i need to be at that table. and so, i think that is what she's trying to balance going forward as well. some of the things that you reference, something like the running for state and local government, something that a lot of republican and democratic leaders south there in states and localities are squawking about right now and i think she calculated in the last round of negotiations that it would become politically impossible for republicans to continue to deny that funding. and so, we do now see, you know, initially mitch mcconnell take up the position that they weren't going to bail out the states because it was sort of the state's problem or not being fiscally responsible enough for once in a century pandemic. and i think she realized and i think we're seeing it happen

that that became politically untenable for the republicans because even now a lot of republican senators and members are saying, look, my state needs this, we can't just say no to this. >> do you have a sense that her power was ever truly threatened by within the caucus? i mean, i guess probably the last time would have been 2017, right? tim ryan of ohio, i guess, did he actually run against her? he was talking about it. >> he did in 2016, but not in 2018. especially lately some younger people have talked about it. do you have a sense other than, you know, going back and forth between the majority and the minority, she was ever threatened from inside the caucus? >> yeah, i mean, there was a fair amount of angst about her leadership during those years in the minority, which were really thankless, for the democratic caucus. a lot of house democrats were very frustrated that they'd had the same leaders for, you know,

13, 15, 17 years and that these leaders are now in their upper 70's, early 80's and a lot of people thought it was time for a fresh face for reasons of perception, mostly, feeling like-- and for reasons of personal ambiti ambition. some thought they should have a chance to move up the leader. and because it was frozen in leadership, it wasn't fair to members with great potential for leadership and also, because she had been the subject of so many attacks, because the republicans had spent probably hundreds of millions of dollars, i think, at this point, turning her into this bogeyman, that she had become sort of toxic particularly for democrats districts to needed their seats to get the majority so the feeling was if she weren't there, to be the subject of those attacks, it would be

better politics for the democrats what you didn't hear was, i think somebody else could do a better job managing the house. i think somebody could do a better job shaping these complex pieces of legislation. that was never the appeal of someone like a tim ryan who challenged her in 2016 or molten and others who did not run against her about you tried to oust her from the speakership in 2018. it really was never about what she sees as her job, which is legislating. it was sort of about these external factors. >> do you think if things go well for democrats in november and democrats keep the house, is it conceivable that they could just keep the same leadership team going forward and if biden wins, someone of equal age in the white house and status quo or do you think, i mean, again, i guess this is a crystal ball thing, but is this a-- i mean, is this probably the last hurrah in some ways for

this team? >> i don't know and i have a firm policy against making predictions. >> sure. >> one bit of fresh reporting in the books, i don't think it was previously reported that back in 2018, there was that leadership race where she worked very hard to diffuse this challenge-- she could afford to lose less than 4% of the caucus when it came to the speaker on the house floor, she had to win almost everyone in that sort of large, unuli and et ideologically and drktically diverse caucus. so one of the conditions she finally accepted to make the final deal to get the votes. she agreed to a term limit that would force down in 2022 and now there's some sort of asterisk on it and conditions,

but basically she could serve no more than two more terms in congress and the next one and according to the book she walked into the next one, and said i wasn't giving anything away i only planned to stay for one term anyway. who knows if that's changed since then, but it does reveal at least at the time, and this also, by the way, i've learned a lot about negotiating tax particulars -- tactics. >> and she is one of hers, that it's painful to give something up and you didn't mind, and didn't want it in the first place. there is something in the book, she's in the negotiating postures and pretends she's giving up something terribly painful and she's actually not. >> has watching this master negotiator and studying her helped you in any way as the patient of three young kids? >> yeah, i really think it has.

>> it's all about-- >> i think that, you know, a lot of these negotiating 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. there's a friend of nancy pelosi once said she knew she was destined for political sense by these five children folding their own laundry. that's one of the major mom goals, i'm not quite there with my three kids. when you think about it, toddlers and politicians have a lot in common, both narcissistic ego maniacs, if you can make them feel their ego is soothed, you can get them to do what you want. and so i do feel like, you know, the-- some of these negotiating tactics that i've learned from watching nancy pelosi do come in handy when you're dealing with children. the fake concession, another

ones i like is name your price, right? where you say to someone, well, what do i have to do to get you to give me x and they named a price that they think is outlandish or impossible, like, well, sure, we'll -- we don't want to let you put the aids quilt on the national mall, but if you could find a way to lift up the quit every 20 minutes so the grass can breathe then you can do it. >> okay, fine, then she gets the volunteers to stand around the side of the aids quilt and lift it so the grass can breathe. and the park service said, we didn't think you could satisfy this condition, but you did, so we have to give you what you want. >> this is interesting, i wasn't actually going to speak of this, but you mentioned aids. obviously, she represented san francisco. na that was an issue that's

very, very close to what she represents and a lot of people she knows and she's been around for a while and certainly has been in the '80s. and do you think-- mitch mcconnell has spoke about covid outbreak and reminding him of his experience with the polio outbreak when he was growing up. do you think there are echoes between what we're living through now and also sort of the uncertainty and just the out of controlledness of having this new and scary disease that can be very fatal, just sort of that it's taking over everything? i hadn't formulated this into a question, but i'm wondering if you've ever heard her talk about or if she would see any parallels at all? >> i haven't heard her make the comparison. i haven't heard everything she's said in the past few weeks, but i think there are some parallels. one of the parallels, frankly, the republican president at the time was very slow to acknowledge the extent.

crisis and that's something that we've seen play out abundantly in the current situation and at the time you know, it took years for president reagan even to say the words hiv or aids. so a big part of what she was a part of, working with, you know, advocates for the gay community, where other members from-- who cared about the issue, she wasn't alone, but one of the things she had to do first before she could get help for the victims of the crisis, is raise awareness of the crisis and remind everybody on both ends of the political spectrum that it had to be dealt with that the government would have to grapple with. and what she did was mail a books to every person in her district of the surgeon general's offerings about aids, just to -- button up myths, you

can't get it from hugging, from a toilet seat and just to get the information out there. and the federal government ended up doing the same thing shortly thereafter. that, sending to hundreds of millions of households to information packet so people understood these and they could proceed to respond to it. >> this is going to be, this is speculative in that it's hypothetical and let you have a swing at it. in november, the democrats keep the house, nancy pelosi stays on as speaker, and donald trump is reelected. do you -- and let's say the senate goes 50-50. technically pence would have or whoever the vice-president is would have the deciding vote. do you see anything salvageable in the pence-trump--

or the pelosi-president trump relationship that could actually make that sort of-- those two most powerful figures in washington, if that scenario arose, is there anything that-- do you think they could deal with each other? do you think that there is middle ground there? do you think if they're both-- they're both if the political positions are such that they don't have to get elected again? do you see anything happening given what you know about them? >> i doubt it only because of the personal relationship. they haven't spoken in months and it's mostly just because trump is mad at her for impeaching him. she is much more coldblooded about these things. she doesn't let her personal feelings decide whether or not she's going to deal with someone on policy and she does have a firm set of policy convictions which i think it's fair to say factually the president does not. so, you know, she spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with him on infrastructure. this is something that, you

know, when donald trump talks about building roads and bridges, he kind of sounds like a democrat, he wants the money and to build a lot of stuff and she kept coming to that negotiating table until he talked away. he's the one that slammed his hands down on the table in the middle of an infrastructure, i can't talk to you as long as this witch hunt is going on. she was willing to continue the policy negotiations even after the impeachment was underway. the president would not. as long as the president is going to-- to her, i think she's willing to and as a matter of politics, as a matter of electoral politics is obsessed with trying to show the american people that democrats are interested in government so the house is passing these bills, hundreds of them on mitch mcconnell's desk, she wants people to know, she wants to

send that message that the democrats they can trust to sort of end the partisan gridlock, not running out of control tornado the lake wing of the party and desires, but to be sensible and actually get things done. so, i think, you know, this is part of why she continues to say and i think-- i don't think buying, you would do a bill on infrastructure, we would do a bill on prescription drugs, there are some areas of commonalty at least in the rhetoric, but the negotiations, i think, it's fair to say, are not ongoing. >> all right. so i now she a picture of you. i don't see the live version of you. i don't know if i'm the only one, but anyway, i can hear you so i'm going to proceed-- >> molly, could you refresh your browser, really quick, please? >> sure. >> i can see and hear everyone fine. >> i can, too.

i'm getting a little bit of feedback. sorry to halt the conversation, but we'll have this up and running quickly. >> thank you. >> so you mentioned impeachment. i mean, what is your sense of-- how did nancy pelosi get to impeachment? she was a holdout for a while and there were certainly more aggressive members of her caucus who wanted to move early on on impeachment. what brought her around, the facts of the ukraine case or was it something else or she felt she had no choice given where the caucus was? >> yeah, i think it was both. i think she felt it had to be done on the merits and also the position that the caucus, the vulnerable members of the caucus politically had moved to. she did not like the suggestion that see caved, right, or that she was following rather than leading the caucus. but i do think it's fair to say

that she always saw it as a sort of pointless endeavor. you have to remember she lived through the clinton impeachment, which she thought was a joke. that's the word that she always used for it, she thought it was basically a political persecution on the part of the republican party that just really for class reasons did not take -- did not see bill clinton as a legitimate president. and when she first became speaker in 2007, she faced a constant drum beat of calls to the left to impeach president bush. she had code pink protesters roaming the halls of congress every day and camped out in her yard in san francisco. and cindy sheehan actually ran against her over the unwillingness to i mpeach president bush. and she said i didn't give into

it then i thought it would be divisive and pointless and i think she still feels that way, i think that she looks at impeachment in the rear view mirror now, well, we had to do it. the president forced us to do it because of his conduct. but what did it accomplish? and if you're nancy pelosi and care about results more than everything, you really don't see the point of this proceeding you know is not going to remove the president. you know it's not going to achieve anything tangible. she says in politics you have to know your why. and her why is the children, the children, the children. so she's always going to look at any particular political problem ap and say, how does this feed a hungry child or improve the workers there or human rights around the world and all impeachment did in her view was -- is sort of, you know, put on this sort of divisive show that didn't

actually accomplish anything. now she would say-- i think that she does feel the one thing that this accomplished was to put a sort of asterisk in president trump's name in the history book. he was impeached on and pointless-- >> does she have regrets about this. >> she's not a person who has regrets. i've asked her many times. do you regret-- she said i don't do regret. she doesn't do regret and she doesn't do fear. >> is there anything-- she always had a certain personal, i don't know fondness, but pb was someone that she used to call a gentleman all the time and still does. they had some moments that, you know, were-- that she remembers and they seem to have had something, if not a working relationship at the time, there was at least some kind of warmth. do you think there's anything

about donald trump that she mass any use for, any respect for? >> no, i don't think so, but i do -- i think if she were -- again, i don't speak for her and i don't want to or pretend to, but what i've asked her a sort of version of this question she's always careful to say that she doesn't disrespect the people who voted for him. she doesn't want to be caught in a sort of basket of deplorables moment and the metaphor she uses which i find tremendously entertaining, did you ever know someone who was dating a jerk and you can't tell that person that they're dating a jerk or they'll stop being friends with you. that's sort of wait them out and try to subtly show them what he's doing to them. she says i hope the people will realize what the president is doing to them, but i don't blame them for being involved with him. >> interesting way of looking

at it. have you had any sense she's read the book? what was the last round of fact checking? do you have any sense that they have, you know, they know what's in it? >> they've had the book since it came out in galleys. i do want to be perfectly clear that the speaker and her staff had no editorial control over the book, right. it is my book, my characterization. she was helpful in terms of giving me interviews and all allowing me to interview a lot of people around her about you this is not authorized in the sense that she signed off on the contents. >> has she ever done an authorized-- >> what he is that-- what's that? >> has she ever done an authorized biography. >> a memoir, they've had the

books in galleys since it was the-- and whether she's had a chance to look through it, but they certainly-- ments i'm sure she's watching. >> and i continue to report on her and continue to interact with her starff. >> i don't mean to go to aesthetic, but the cover. and no subtitles, and let's give the whole game away in the endless subtitle. but what made you to decide you had a whole, you know, this is not-- there are people and graphics people, what made you decide to confidently call it pelosi with nothing else and that graphic you used? >> well, so, first of all i have to give a shout out to my publisher henry holt.

the designs came up the design. i'd never come up with something so hip and stylish. i love the cover. i think it's stylish and captures her and captures the tone of the book and what i've been talking about, the way that culture has caught up to her brand of femininity after many years of sort of abuse. but also, i think, evan ooh knows who it's about from the title, right? >> absolutely. >> and i cut people a lot of slack who need a subtitle to communicate why the topic they're writing about is significant, right? if i were writing about some lesser-known figure i would need a subtitle to sort of tell you this is the man who, you know, detonated the atomic bomb that blew up mars, or whatever, that would be probably pretty famous. and everybody knows who she is. when you say pelosi there's one person you're talking about and

for all of his wonderful qualities, her husband paul. so i like the simplicity of it, i like the simplicity of the cover design, but i also think it sort of speaks for itself in that she is a figure who is already plenty famous enough. people are going to know who she is when they pick up the book. >> you don't have to sell the subject, which is a nice luxury. what made you decide to have such a-- to what made you decide to have such unintrusive voice in the book. there are people who write and have interviews like you and i do, and you have a sense of what it's like like in the room with them. like what it's like to talk to them. like the author's voice comes through. you can talk a little about your own experience. i mean, you really stand book. i mean he wondering how you

decided to sort of write in the voice that you did and if you had to develop over time as you're getting into the narrative. >> yeah, i'm not sure if it was really even a conscious decision. i do, like as a profile writer and a feature writer, i often write in the first person. i think it can help bring a reader into the story, like you said. in in case, i just wanted to tell her story almost in a novelistic fashion, right? i wanted it to feel like a work of story telling more than a work of reporting. so to-- so there's not a lot of direct quotes in the book, sort of contemporaneous quotes, there's not a lot of people i've interviewed looking back and reflecting on things that happened because i wanted to sort of keep it in the moment. i wanted people to feel like they were experiencing this sort of as it happened, but you know, it's tricky.

i've never written a book before. never done a biography before and it's a really interesting problem that all biographers confront wanting to be inside and outside of your subject at the same time, right? wanting to see things through their eyes, but also wanting to be able to have objectivity and show how they're perceived by others and show somewhat skeptical of you no matter what you do. and that's kind of what i was trying a to achieve. >> i've got a text that would say would you like to move to-- we'll move to q & a, sorry beth. we're going to turn this over to our audience and we're going to take questions. is there some way you can ask questions? i'm sort of now throwing myself at the mercy of technology and

hoping that at some point in the very near future there will be questions that appear before me and that you'll ask them in some way. >> and there's a question q where it says ask a question, and if you click on that, the list comes up with the questions there. >> oh, here we go. okay. all right. so i will pick which one here, all right, a good one. from-- i don't know if i should name the, martina asks. molly, what the most surprising thing you learned about speaker pelosi? >> hard to say at this point, but i think one of the things that really surprised me about her was her aggression, frankly, her assertiveness, her boldness. you know, she came up at a time when it was not really culturally acceptable for women to be strong, assertive and

aggressive. she's a real risk taker and a gambler in some ways. willing to put herself out there. always willing to get into people's faces. so i think it's from ripping up trump's speech and chasing down a reporter who accused her of hating the president, don't mess with me. and she's always willing to get in people's faces and stick up for herself. i think it comes from her -- comes from her sort of feminism that she always felt able to advocate for herself in that way. one of my favorite lesser-known stories from her career that's in the book her activism on human rights in china and she, you know, this is someone who in 1991 traveled to beijing with some of other colleagues, and then on the last day of their state sanctioned trip,

they told the chinese authorities they were too tired to go on their tour of the great wall. they snuck out the back of their hotel took a taxi to tiananmen square and one of the congre congressmen she was with, fun fact he played on the dukes of hazzard. had struggled something from his underwear and unfurled it and said for those who died for democracy in china. and they were attacked by the chinese police and chased them out of the square and detained some of the journalists who covered this and you can still see some who covered this and she literally-- bodily harm in order to stage this bold demonstration for what she believed in. and politically as well. back in 2003 when a lot of the top democrats, including the

speaker -- including the democratic house leader at the time and including, you know, people like hillary clinton and john kerry, thought that it would be bad politics to oppose the iraq war and she came out defense -- against it, and she whipped against her own leadership because she believed so strongly that the war was the wrong thing to do and as the top democrat on the intelligence committee she'd seen the case for war that the administration was presenting and she didn't think that it stood up to scrutiny. so she's known for her toughness and steeliness, but that kind of boldness which i think powered her to where she is today, right, the boldness to run for leadership when litter will i no with woman had had a top leadership position in either house of congress, she's still the only person --

woman to lead, and there are only 23 women in the house of representatives when she got there in 1987 out of 435 members. so she was-- and when she said she wanted when she decided to seek the leadership position, she heard through of the grape vice-preside vine said well who said she could run. she said i don't need your permission, i believe i can do it. >> a question from cherise. did pelosi have a frustration with obama's and obama's cabinets' relative inexperience? >> yes, i think that is a big theme of the sort of the chapter in the book about the oba obama era. she and obama became close and they have a lot of mutual respect and trust and like, and so i don't want to make it seem

like there's any sort of grudge between them. but it was sort of a theme of congressional coverage throughout the obama years that the democrats in the senate never felt like he was a great negotiator when it came to dealing with the republicans, they felt he gave too much upfront. that he was willing to-- he was so -- he'd made this promise of bipartisan and concensus and healing the country, and he can't do this if we don't go along with it and keep him from fulfilling this promise and hurt him politically. i think she realized that a long time before he did. and she was frustrated to go to great length to try to get republicans to do things with him when she didn't think they were negotiating in good faith. she didn't think they ever had intention of cooperating and so

a lot of frustration came from that dynamic. >> so using my expert vote counting abilities myself i see that the question that has the most votes that they want me to ask, i'm going to ask. i've-- this is liz lee. i've been very impressed with speaker pelosi's ability to bring together diverse factions of the democratic party even in difficult issues, ie, cash herd abilities. how is she able to do this so effectively? >> that's a great question and one i've been thinking about. this is her great strength. it stands in contrast to the republican speakers who preceded her and the house more or less fell apart while john boehner and paul ryan were in charge of the republican caucus, the entire technically the speaker, but they were unable to keep their caucus together and i think a lot of people said well, the caucus is

so diverse, you have the unreasonable freedom caucus people and people from the liberal districts, more conservative districts, more urban districts, more rural districts. but the democratic caucus is far more diverse than the republican caucus, i think demographically and ideologically and yet, there have been some quite fractious disagreements between different factions of the caucus. ... but i think similar to her

mothering strategy she wields the care and the stick very expertly, and she's very good at letting people know that she's not mad at you, just disappointed. and that feeling of discipline is very acute if you cross her, if you may live to regret it. but they comes down to, i mention some of these negotiating strategies and that are certain concrete tips and tricks you can point to. what i ended up concluding in a larger sense is it really is just an incredible understanding of human nature on her part. she has an incredible memory details and for people, never forgets the face, always knows not only who you are, which i can't even tell apart all the members of the house of representatives should now to knows that she knows your spouse

and your parents and your pets and what your priorities are, what issues are interested in, with the makeup of your district is of what might be difficult for you to do politically. she's got all of that file in her head and then she knows all of her people. she maintains those relationships. she makes everybody feel they have been listen to and have been heard and a lot of times that's all it takes. she seems to have endless time to just listen to people and she won't wear them out. if someone should kind talks him into something she will just keep them in the negotiating session until they just kind of give up because she has outlasted them. >> i want to recognize we now have over 500 people on our attendance list here, so before it asked next question of what to think everyone for coming and

also there will be a separate pitch for this but central all on computers there's going to be tendency to want to buy this on kindle or something like that. you are not permitted to do that. you should do it on politics and prose is online or some kind of ordering thing they can tell you about. anyway, thank you for being here. the next question is, it follows on what you're just talking about, which is did you talk to nancy pelosi about what it was like growing up in a political family in baltimore? i heard it a a go from which ae just entering is, knowing faces and names and writing thank you notes is an old-school boss, all political way. i would issues talked about what her political background was like and how 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 had become the mayor of baltimore, and this is old-school democratic machine urban politics where there's patronage, david trading, all of the different demographics in the city have a political boss who controls the and you have to seek court to the person. i think you can see a lot of it old-school political style in the legislative tactics she used. at the same time a lot of what i tried to do in the early chapters of this book is refocus attention on her mother. it's so natural to see the political heritage in her father because she did join in the family business but she is always taken pains to say that she was shaped equally by the influence of her mother, and she talks openly which i think is interesting about how her mother felt stifled in her life and about how her mother was never able to achieve her dreams and goals because she was a woman

and about her mother wanted to be at auctioneer, to go to law school, wanted to market and sell a beauty products invented and patented, and her husband would not give up his signature in order, which women need at the time in order to do things like that. she was very shaped, and not to be stereotypical about it but her mother was sort of very strong and asserted a child american lady, also not afraid to get up in peoples faces. there's a story once she punched a poll worker in the face as she was mad at. she ran a lot of the political operation for her husband. she never got the credit, she wasn't the one whose name was on the ballot but she was the one running the women's democratic services operations the favor file out of the families parlor where they could take peoples names, write them on a pad, refer people for services if they needed to get into a

housing project or into the hospital or a job or whatever. so her mother was a big part of the work. the last thing i will say about her political heritage is that it's very ground-level, very grassroots. if you are an urban politician you have to know every block, know every precinct you can't run a campaign just with a bunch of expensive television ads. you really have to get out there and pound the pavement and do the work. that is still the advice she gives to candidates that she recruits to run for office, and it's still the way she thinks about electoral politics is precinct by precinct, locked by block down at the ground level. her older brother who also later became mayor of baltimore and you is a great friend and mentor to her called it human nature in 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 anyway this question has a lot of support from the voters, so from jessica lovering, or whatever, nancy pelosi of an interest in running for president or the senate? do you think that makes her more powerful in the house? >> no and yes to those two questions. she has never -- there was a time when she was sort of up-and-coming in politics when she was newish to the house for everyone so much would be on somebody's long list of potential vice presidential candidates. but she always said she wasn't interested. she's never, you know, dangled in the hands she might be interested in higher office. every politician says this, part

of the repertoire that if someone asked you, are you just look at the next front of the latter, you're supposed to say no, i'm focused on my work in the house and the great people of the fifth district. she's been saying that for long enough it's become believable and it is a big part of her power, a very smart observation by jessica, thank you, jessica. because her members know that she isn't trying to make a name for herself. her predecessor as leader of the democrats dick gephardt can anyone knew he wanted to be president. he ran for president before. he was going to run again in 2004, and so ready when you as much as he was guarding their interest in running the caucus in the house he also had his eye on the next thing and had a personal ambition and stake in what was going on that sort of devoted his focus. she's never had that. no member of her caucus thinks

she is just trying to pad her resume so she can seek the next run up on the ladder so they get their credibility and telling her members should focus on looking out for their interests. i've been told this is the last question and i will just go with majority rules. so 13 people have voted for this question. this is from jeff. what kind of access did you get to the speaker? >> she gave me a series of interviews, and i have been covering her since he for started writing the books like interviewed her previously prior to starting work on the biography. i would not say we became friends. she never invited me in and showed me around her house or introduce me to her family or that kind of thing. there's a formality to her. there is a sense of removed that she has, and she has good

relationship with the capitol hill press corps, but she isn't the sort of chummy, folksy politician who really, that strikes reporters as like colorful and entertaining. so anna talk about this a little bit in the book, you know. i do sort of right the fourth wall in the afternoon and talk about my personal feelings and reflections about the reporting process. i did never feel like idea to really get inside her head in that way. i felt like i observed are very closely and i got to understand the way she works and operates, but because she isn't someone who engages in public introspection, i think she is a fundamentally private person and i was not able to fully penetrate that. >> well, i will say it again, it's a great book and thank you all for being here.

i know you are all wearing masks. appreciate the great social distancing. [inaudible] >> also everyone by the book, buy it through politics and prose which is a national treasure, certainly a d.c. treasure and thank you for watching us. i guess, can we sign off? >> you can go right ahead. i will say before we close tonight that again, we thank you all so much for being here in the audience. molly, mark, this was a really lovely conversation about a personal, favorite book, at least mine. thank you so much. i do encourage the audience to buy the book from politics and prose. your patronage is what is like as today up and running right now. those book sales i really crucial, and also we are

offering you the option tonight to donate to politics and prose. we are accepting those donations and we really appreciate everyone who comes in. but definitely, definitely purchase "pelosi" by molly ball tonight. we have a lot of other great events coming up down the pipeline, and i encourage you to click on politics and prose logo above to check those out. but until then i hope we see you again, stay well, stay well read and take care, everybody. goodbye, all. >> liftoff. >> today watch live coverage of the launch of space x commercial crew test flight marking the first launch of astronauts on american soil in spacecraft since 2011.

our live coverage of the space x crew dragon launch begins at 12:15 p.m. eastern on c-span2 with liftoff at 4:30 p.m. as nasa astronauts launch to the international space station. in a post-launch briefing with nasa administrator jim bridenstine at 6 p.m. eastern. thursday at 11:15 a.m. eastern on c-span2, all they live coverage of the space x crew dragon as it talks with the international space station the opening of the hatch between the two space vehicles and debate between the space x crew dragon and iss crew. watch live on c-span2 come online c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> a lost of confidence, away the sins of that is left is unable to trust what we're told anyone who calls himself an

expert it becomes very difficult for us to rise to a challenge like this. our first reaction is to say no, they're lying to us, , only in t for themselves, and a lot of our nationalist institutions and got to take on the challenge of persuading people again that they exist for us, that they're here here for the country sunday june 7 at noon eastern on "in depth", unlike conversation with author and american enterprise institute scholar yuval levin. his most recent book is a time to build other titles include the great debate, and the fracture be public. join the conversation with your phone calls, tweets, text and facebook messages. watch "in depth" with yuval levin on booktv on c-span2. >> host: joining us now on booktv is author nick adams, his six book is just out. here it is, "trump and churchill: defenders of western civilization." mr. adams, what do preside