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>> hello everybody and welcome to pnc life, my name is that long and i work in politics and prose read you for joining us our online format, we're interviewing our proud tradition of politics and prose alternates , bringing the authors you love and their books to our community. at any time during the event tonight is the green button below to purchase the book on tnt's website. where offering five dollar media now shipping as an incentive especially as our physical stores are close and we need those online purchases in order to keep bringing you the programming that we are known for. tonight you can ask theauthor a question by clicking on ask a question . downnear the bottom of your screen . and that box you can also read other people's questions vote forthe ones you'd like to get answers to the most . a reminder that an hour in person and the author post an audience member cannot see the screen but we welcome you in these pajamas.

onto the main event. we deeply researched portrait on house speaker nancy pelosi , "time magazine" award-winning national political correspondence draws on exclusive interviews to track pelosi's career from her election to congress in 1987 through her legislative accomplishments such as universal healthcare, gays in the military through her complications with trump and managing . join our conversation with the chief national correspondent for the new york times and author of the nfl in dangerous times welcome molly and mark . >> thanks everyone. >> i guess we are on. ithink it's great, i like this . we are here, yes. i'm mark,this is molly over on the other side of the screen . we have a lot of people here, the number on the bottom of

the screen says 428 people. >> most of those are russian box . >> first of all, thank you president and mrs. obama and clinton and carter and bush for coming . for all we know there in the audience . thank you for asking me to do this. thank you for being here. this is a great book and i will tell you that i've read it the last couple of days. it took me maybe a day and a half and it was pure pleasure to do and it was fun having molly off-line. it's both a really pleasurable beach read kind of thing and at the same time it will be one of those historical things where if you want to learn about one of the two or three most consequential people of the century so far politically you will have a document that will tell you everything you need to know about nancy pelosi . and so i have 1 million questions and i know you do too but what i'm going to do

is ask questions for about a half hour and turn it over to you all with questions and there's a way to ask questions that they can figure out orwe can figure out for you . but molly, do you want to say something off the top or do you want to jump up with questions? >> i know mark. i'm a huge admirer of your writing and i really appreciate you doing this. but yes, why don't you fire away? it's just do the dialogue. >> let's do it. so you have never written a book before and this is your first and i assume you have heard the horror stories about what it's like to write a book or you heard all these triumphant stories about how great the process is. what was it like? did you like doing this? is this something you would recommendto somebody was never done it before ?

you exceed expectations, not meet expectations? >> i 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 sure, a lot of pain but you don't internalize exactly how that's going to be until you go through it yourself and go all my god, this is really hard. people have done much harder things . i don't want to exaggerate or feel sorry for myself but it's hard to write a book and it's hard to write a book about moving targets. i was constantly trying to figure out where i was going and given that it's a wonderful characteristic of my time that she's still active in politics and interesting to people but she kept making it difficult to finish the book.when i was in the process of reaching researching and interviewing people, leading up to and

during my impeachment was getting underway and we thought that was going to be the big story of the 20/20 election cycle. now it looks made up. but it was a challenge but definitely very fulfilling. i feel like not only did i learn a lot but also as you know, when you report on politics sort of day in day out, there seems that you sort of develop find in your writing. there's things start to feel like your understanding in a lot of dimensions about politics so for me i think this is a way to bring a lot of that together. it was a way to bring together years of recording and writing about unrest, women in politics and about the way the political system works and congress works. and if you're a magazine writer you always like more lord and they're willing to put in themagazine . but it's great ã300 pages really spell it all out.

>> what made you decide nancy pelosi was the one that would be worthy of however longest of you and mark. >> honestly all of the political figures i have, she was the one that felt big enough for a book, big enough that i really could take that deep 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 . first i sort of wasn't thrilled about the assignment i didn't think he was all that interesting frankly it was only once i got in there and started learning about her thinking about her thinking about all of the again, scenes and characteristics of her career that i really started to think there were a lot of layers here on. a lot of really interesting history and residents and

just stuff people don't know about her. stuff i didn't know about her. and i actually had a conversation with david meredith a few years ago and i was trying to come up with a book to write and i couldn't come up with anything and i said how do you know that, that you had something that was worthy of a book ratherthan like a long article and he said jesus have to be obsessed with it . that'sthe first subject i've been upset within that way . >> merrick is always a great person inspiration and to put you in the right headspace for something like that. i would say you mentioned in the text or maybe part of this was i think in the end but also in the text you imply she's not a great interview. she's not, i mean she's not, she doesn't make fun or she doesn't make it easy. she doesn't need days, she doesn't speak off-the-cuff that what you she's also a private person. if you, how did you separate

how difficult and she cannot she is the crack with the ambitions it takes to actually know that you can actually crack the not enough to write an interesting magazine story or book? >> she's really interesting because so much of politics is documentation. and i don't think she'll ever beconsidered one of the great political orators of our age . she, that's not to say she's not bright and articulate and thoughtful and she isn't one of these robotic politicians that are terrified of saying the right thing. they just repeat themselves over and over and won't answer any questions but he is someone who engages in public introspection. he's not going to tell you all the things she's been thinking about herself. you sort of have to figure out and she's not a natural storyteller. that's part of it to read a lot of compelling political

speech fire you actually in stories or are always reeling off these personal and there's a pretty conspicuous absence of that in most of our 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 what is the relationship to how a person is received and what they actually do. and how much of that are they responsible for, how much of that is our society responsible for. how much does it say about the person being perceived. i don't want to get to meta-deconstructionists but you know, we hear about this all the time. with the president for example, a lot of the presidents defender will say people get mad at his what he does. a lot of hispanics will say no, when he says matters just as much as what you so i don't think there! that dysfunction in nancy

pelosi but the other thing about her is as a communicator i would say is that i think the thing that you really understand about her is everything with her is about results read everything is about what she's going to get out of whatever the interaction is whether it's an interview or being on television, getting a seat at a fundraiser area whatever so she's just much more interested in driving a message on and she is in making you like her or making herself feel good for making an audience applauded.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. a couple days ago i interviewed for the first time aoc, alexandria of.co cortez who is a bit of a kind a shadow to nancy pelosi in some ways who is very

progressive sort of insurgent in the house, that nancy pelosi runs herkind of traditional way . nancy is as he said" to meand her feelings all the time . is very vulnerable, very open, very lineal that way and i wonder if you ever had any occasion to see nancy pelosi and her vulnerability at all and i wonder if she ever ... i'm just wondering what it felt like in some ways and what let you see, what it's like to be attacked the way she is, targeted the way she is, mischaracterized the way she is? >> i wouldn't say i got a sense of vulnerability from her. i did essentially feel like she had let her guarddown enough to get a little snippy with me which was nice . i felt like i was getting to

her enough for that but she is not an emotive person certainly and i think you're right that there's something generational about that. i think the generation she comes from being born in the 1940s, she's now 80 years old and she comes from a much moreformal era , particularly for women. and i think as you alluded to as well, you can't separate the way she carries herself from how she has been treated. how she's been turned into the bogeyman, this punchingbag, this literally republicans made an ad called attack of the 50 foot pelosi where she's a rampaging giant that's something on people. and so like look, politics may be that, i'm not saying that is necessarily unfair but i think when you're subject of that kind of onslaught, you do sort of build yourself a suit of armor. he's even described herself that way i put on a suit of armor and i go into battle punch, you take a punch so

she very much sees politics, and he is renowned for her toughness, for her stealing us. for her discipline. and i think that a lot of that comes from just refusing to be vulnerable and in public and refusing to let anyone ever be her sweat. >> 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 come kind of good faith feeling with either in the house or in the administration? >> i mean, she certainly likes some of the republican governors. she's been dealing with directly a lot of the popular blue state republican governors who been on the frontlines of the coronavirus response and i recently profiled the governor of maryland and he's someone

who's gotten to know nancy pelosi a little bit i think surprisingly to them both. so i think she is one of these, you hear this a lot from democrats to read i miss the old republican party back when republicans were nice and gentle and you but she was literally born into the democratic party there's never been any doubt about her partisan loyalty. and she describes her upbringing that night. >> .. work

they finally find the perfect place. it's got a guard and it's got a swingset and it's perfect for their family and as they are about to sign the papers they think literally she turns and says why are you renting out your house and she says we are moving to washington. my husband is accepting a job in the -- i refuse to live in a house made available by the house of richard nixon. she so it's been a democratic partisan and not had a particular party but she's accomplished a lot things throughout her career. i think understanding the way she operates is much more about knowing what your convictions aren't having a firm sense of

your values and where you come from and understanding where the other side is coming from and trying to find a way to meet somewhere in the middle but satisfied both parties. it isn't like oh we should go have a drink with john boehner. she's not a politician might bad. schuman the democratic leader in the senate is more about that area and that affection between human beings and i think that's not the way her policies work. she's more about counting votes and doing the deal. >> what is your sense about what she cares about right now with the ongoing stimulus negotiation? it strikes me that democrats are talking all the time about vote by mail, bowed elections protections and making sure whatever happens in november is safe and on the level and so

forth. and yet you don't see the leverage that nancy pelosi now has ever come out of this. what is your sense of how the next round of negotiations might go especially given how port and it is to democrats? >> it's been interesting to watch. she always has on this but it's a high-wire act for her where you have she's not pulling enough for republicans or republicans calling her an obstructionist or not immediately giving them everything that they want. she has got to balance those competing demands and i think what you see as she recognizes the urgency of this moment as she knows action has to happen fast and that's hard in the congress as gridlocked and darker money as is this one but she also feels the american

people what the democrats in charge of the house of representatives for a reason and therefore they deserve a seat at the table so in the early round of peace negotiations there was an attempt to around her and cut her out and not agree to her demands to have what they call formal negotiations between the house and senate with the white house. and she said look i need to be at that table. they need to be part of the discussion and i'm willing to be reasonable and give up some of my initial wishes but i need to be that table. i think that's what she's trying to do going forward as well so some things to reference something like fighting for state and local government is republican and democratic leaders out there in states and locality are squawking about it

now. it would be calm political -- politically impossible for republicans to deny that. mitch mcconnell took the position that they were going to bail out the states because they wouldn't be fiscally responsible enough for a once in a century pandemic and i think she realized we are seeing it happened it came politically untenable for republicans because a lot of republicans members are saying we can't say no to this. >> do have a sense of her power threatened within the caucus? i think the last time was in 2017. tim ryan of ohio i guess running against her. he was talking about a. >> you did in 2016 but not 2018.

>> lately younger people talk about it. give us a sense of the going back and forth between a majority in the minority. >> i mean there is a fair amount of angst about her leadership during those years in the minority which were really thankless in the democratic caucus. a lot of house democrats were very frustrated that they have the same leaders for 13, 15, 17 years and these leaders are now in their upper 70s early 80s and a lot of people thought it was time for a fresh face. a lot of house democrats thought they should have a turned move up the ladder and into the top leadership that wasn't fair to a lot of members with great potential for leadership and also because she's been the

subject of so many attacks calling on the republicans hundreds of millions of dollars i think. turning her into this bogeyman and she's politically toxic particularly for democrats and republicans leading districts. they seem to get the majority and so the feeling was if she wasn't there to be subject to those attacks we'd have better politics for the democrats. i think someone else could do a better job in the house. i think someone could do a better job taking these complex pieces of legislation. i was never the appeal in 2016 or so mothers who did not run against her or tried to oust her from the speakership and 201830 really was never about what she sees as her job which is legislating. it was much more about -- .

>> do you think of things go well for the democrats in november the democrats keep the house, is it conceivable that they can keep the same leadership team going forward and abide wins they could have more aids in the white house and just the status quo or do you think i guess this is a crystal ball thing but isn't probably the last hurrah in some ways for the speaker? >> i don't know and i have a firm policy against making predictions. i don't think it's been previously reported that in 2018 there was that leadership race where she worked very hard because she could afford to lose less than 10% of the caucus on the house floor in order to be elected speaker so she really had to win over almost everyone

in the democratically diverse democratic caucus. one of the conditions that she finally accepted to make the final deal to get those votes was she agreed. there's some sort of -- but basically it said she can serve no more than two and in the book she said i wasn't really giving anything away because i only plan to stay for one term anyway. not a lot has changed since then but it reveals at least at the time and this also by the way i learned about the go shooting tactics from nancy pelosi but this is one of her great tactics and debate to pretend if terrell police painful to give something

up that you are not giving up at all. you didn't mind giving it up or you didn't want in the first place. you see her negotiating posture where she pretends that she's giving up something terribly painful and actually she's not. >> as i'm watching this negotiator studying -- the parent of three young kids. >> i really think it has. i think a lot of these to go shooting pack takes came from her experience as a mother as someone who had five children in six years and by all accounts ran an extremely disciplined household. there's a friend of nancy pelosi who once said she knew she was destined or political -- because she had all the children folding her laundry. but if you think about it

toddlers and politicians have a lot in common. if you can make them feel like they are ego is being sued to get them to do it you want. and so i do feel like some of these negotiating ex-that i have learned from watching nancy pelosi do come in handy for when you are dealing with the fake confessions of some of the others that i like. the name your price where you say to someone well what i have to do to get you to give me x and they name a price that they think is outlandish or impossible. well, we don't want to let you put the dash on the national mall but if you can find a way to lift up the quilt every 20 minutes so the grass is green and he can do it to cheeses okay

fine issued its volunteers to stand around and every 20 minutes they lift it and the park service has no choice but to say we didn't think you could satisfy the conditions but you did so we have to give you what you want. >> this is interesting and you mentioned aids and she representative san francisco pier that was an issue that is very close to her given what she represents a lot of people as she knows and she's been around for a while. mitch mcconnell has talked in some ways about the covid outbreak and reminding him of his own experience with polio when he was growing up. are there any echoes do you think about what we are living through now and the uncertainty and the out-of-control feeling of having this new disease that

can be very fatal that is taking over everything and i will formulate into a question. if this is something you've ever heard her talk about? >> i haven't heard her make the comparison and i haven't heard everything she said in the past two weeks but one of the parallels frankly the republican president at the time was slow to acknowledge it and that's something we have seen play out abundantly in the current situation and at the time it took years for president reagan even to say hiv or aids so big part of what she was a part of working with advocates or other members from the issue she wasn't alone the one of the things she really had to do first before she could get help

for the victims of the crisis was to raise awareness of the crisis to convince everybody on the political spectrum that it was something that needed to be dealt with in the federal government had to grapple with it. one of the things that she did early on was to mail a booklet to every constituent in her district of the surgeon general's information a myths rounding the disease and you can't get it from hugging and toilet paper and whatever and to put that information out there in the federal government ended up doing the same thing shortly thereafter, giving up hundreds of millions of information packets of people could understand and respond to it he >> i'm not going to ask you to make a prediction at all but it's speculative and

hypothetical and i'll have you take a swing at it. in november if democrats keep the house and nancy pelosi stays on his speaker and donald trump gets reelected, and let's say the senate goes 50/50 and whoever the vice president would be the deciding vote. do you see anything salvageable in the pelosi trump relationship that could actually make that, those two most powerful figures in washington if that scenario rose to you think there is middle ground there if they are in the political position such that they wouldn't be elected again? do you see anything happening? >> i doubt it only because of

the personal relationship. they haven't spoken in months and it's mostly because trump is mad at her for impeaching him. she really doesn't let her versatile feelings aside whether or not she is going to deal with their policy and she does have a firm set of policy conditions which i think is fair to say the president does not. she spent a lot of time trying to negotiate on the info structure and this is something that they talked about building roads and bridges. he wanted to spend lots of money and build lots of stuff and she kept coming to that negotiating table so he walked away. he was the one who slammed his hand down in the middle of the infrastructure meeting. she was willing to deal and willing to continue policy negotiations and the

investigation were underway so the president would not. as long as the president was going to -- there was nothing she could do about it. think she also as a matter of politics and electoral politics is obsessed with trying to show the american people that democrats are adjusted in passing all these hundreds bills sitting on mitch mcconnell's desk because she does want people to know if she wants to send that message they can trust the democrats put in charge of things to be responsible and not to run out of control with the left-wing of the party but to be sensible and actually get things done. this is part of why she continued to say we would do a bill on infrastructure or there are some areas of commonality

but the negotiations i dare say are not ongoing. >> i see a picture of you and i don't see the live version of you but anyway i can hear you. >> k molly could you show your graphic? >> i'm getting a little bit of feedback. sorry everybody. sorry to hault the conversation but we will have this up and running very quickly. >> you mentioned impeachment. how did nancy pelosi get there quick she was a holdout for her while and an there was or her caucus who wanted to move early on to impeachment area and what was it that brought her around

was that the ukraine case or was it something else? >> i think it was both. she felt it was on its merits and it was the position that the is particularly the vulnerable members of the caucus politically had moved. she did not like the suggestion that she caved her she was falling but i do think it's fair to say she saw it as a pointless endeavor. you have to remember the crisis impeachment which she thought was a joke and that was the word she always used for it. she thought it was 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 heard

the constant drumbeat from the left to impeach the president for jihad code tank protesters were only the halls of congress everyday and cindy sheehan to the antiwar activists ran against her in a primary over this unwillingness to impeach president bush. it wasn't as loud a drumbeat as we had the last couple of years but that was another experience that informed her to say i thought it would be divisive and pointless. i think she still feels that way. we have to do it through the president forces to do it but what did it accomplish? you care about the results about everything you really don't get to -- you know it's not going to remove the president and it's not going to achieve anything tangible. she always says in politics you have to know you're why in her

wide as the children, the children, the children. she's always going to look at any particular political problem and say well how does this feed a hungry child or help workers somewhere for human rights around the world and all impeachment did was put on the divisive show that it didn't actually accomplish and read anything she does feel the one thing it accomplished was president trump being in the history books. she will always say he's been impeached and he can't do anything to change that. other than that i think she does feel is rather pointless. >> does she have regrets about this? >> she's not a person who has regrets. i have asked her many times and she just says i don't do that.

she doesn't do regret. >> is there anything, she always had a certain personal fondness and president bush was someone that she used to call a gentleman all the time and she still does. they seem to have had something of a working relationship at the time. is there anything about donald trump that she has any use for? >> no. i don't think so. but i think and again i don't speak for her and i don't portend to but when i've asked her the version of the questions he's always careful to say she doesn't disrespect the people who voted for him. she doesn't want to get caught in the squabble to the metaphor she uses which i find tremendously entertaining is to you ever know someone who's

dating a jerk and you can't tell that person that they are dating a jerk. try to subtly show them what he is doing to them. she says i hope you people will realize what it's doing to them but i don't blame them for being involved with him. >> interesting. do you have any sense of her office? what was the fact-checking and do you have any sense that they know what to that? >> they have had the books and i do want to be perfectly clear that the speaker and her staff had no senatorial -- it's my book in and my characterization. she was helpful in terms of giving me interviews and allowing me to interview a lot

of people around her. this is not authorized in the sense that she authorized the content. >> has she ever done an authorized biography? >> she has written a memoir and there's a lot of good material in their that i drawn in the book but so you know they've been pretty busy from what i understand. whether she has had a chance to work through it and i continue to report on her. >> the cover is great with the lack of a subtitle. there's a whole subtitle industrial complex and political books where you have your title

and then let's give the whole game away in the subtitle. i know we are words people and their other records people but what made you decide to put pelosi was something else and that graphic used? >> first of all have to give a shout-out to my publisher -- publisher henry holt who came up with this cover design. i would never have come up with something so hip and stylish absolute love the cover is so stylish and it captures heard that captures the book, captures a lot of what i've been talking about with the culture that has caught up with her brand of femininity after many years of abuse. also i think everyone knows who it's about from the title. i cut people a lot of slack who

need to communicate why the topic they are writing about is interesting. if i were to write about a lesser-known figure i would be the subtitle to tell you this is the man who you know detonated the atomic bomb. that book would be pretty famous but everyone knows who she is. there's only one person you are talking about and for all of his wonderful qualities so i think that i like the simplicity of it. i like the simplicity of the cover and i think it speaks for herself and that she is a figure who is are the plenty famous enough. >> you don't have to sell the subject which is nice. what made you decide to have,

what made you decide to have such an unimpressive -- because there a lot of people who have interviews like you and i do and you have a sense of what it's like in the room with them. when the author's voice comes through you can talk about your own experience. i'm wondering how you decided to sort of right in the voice that you did and you developed it over time getting into the narrative. >> you know i'm not sure. there wasn't even really conscious decision. i do as a writer i do write in the first person. it can bring the reader into the story and a sense but in this case i just wanted to tell her story almost in a novelistic fashion.

i wanted it to feel like the work of storytelling more than a work of reporting. so there's not a lot of quotes in the book sort of contemporaneous quotes. there is aren't a lot of people i've interviewed looking back in her foot thing on things that happened because i wanted to keep it in the moment. i wanted people to feel like they were experiencing this sort is as it happened but you know it's tricky. i have never done a biography before and it is a really interesting problem that all biographers confronted sort of wanting to be inside and outside of your subject at the same time, right? wanting to see things through their eyes and wanting to have a little bit of opportunity to be somewhat skeptical of the stories they tell that we all do. people will judge whether i did

that successfully but that was what i was trying to achieve. >> okay so i'm moving to q&a. we are going to turn this over to our audience and we are going to take questions and let's see. is there some way you can ask questions? i'm throwing myself at the mercy of technology and hoping in our future there will be questions that appear before my. there is a question q. and if you click on that the list comes up of questions there. >> okay. i will pick which one here.

martina asked what is the most surprising thing you've learned about speaker pelosi? >> it's hard to say this point but i think one of the things that really surprised me about her was her aggression frankly her assertiveness and her boldness. it was at a time it was not really hold true except the bull for women to be strong and sort of aggressive but she is a real risk-taker. she is a gambler in some ways. she is willing to get in people's faces. i think this is familiar from ripping up trump's speech and chasing down a reporter saying don't mess with me. this goes all the way back to the rear area stays of her career. she has always been willing to get into people's faces and stick up for herself. i think it just comes from her

sense of feminism that she always felt able to advocate for herself in that way. one of my favorite lesser-known stories from her career in the book is about her activism on human rights in china. this is someone who in 1991 travel to beijing with some of her colleagues and on the last day of their sanctions 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 to tiananmen square and one of the congressmen as she was with who played -- on the "dukes of hazzard" in the hopes of becoming a senator. they unfurled it and it said for those who died were democracy in

china. they chased them out of the square and attain some of the journalists who were covering it. she quite literally risked bodily harm in order to stage this. old 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 including people like hillary clinton and john kerry thought it would be bad poet picks to oppose the iraq war. she came out against it and she encouraged her colleagues to vote against it. she went against the war resolution against her on leadership because she believes so strongly that the war was the wrong thing to do and on the intelligence committee she had

seen it and it wasn't up to her scrutiny. she is known for her steely nest but that kind of boldness were too empowered her to where she is today with the boldness to run for leadership when literally no woman had ever had a top leadership position in either house of congress. >> she still the only one to lead her woman -- party in the house of congress and she had to take on the mailed dominated establishment to do that. there were only 23 women in the house of representatives when she got there in 1987 of afford it 35 members. and when she said she'd took the leadership position she heard through the grapevine that the men will empower were saying was who says she can apply quick she said i don't need your

permission. that this is from charisse. does pelosi have a problem with obama's relative inexperience? >> negative to fame in the chapter of the book about the obama era was that you know she and obama became very close. they have a lot of mutual respect and i don't want to make it seem like there's any grudge between them. throughout the obama years the democrats in the house and senate never felt like he was a particularly great negotiator what he was dealing with the republicans for the eyes felt like he gave up too much and that he was willing, he made this promise for bipartisanship in consensus and healing the

country and bringing people together so the republicans realize right off the bat we can keep him from fulfilling this promise and hurt him politically and she realized that a long time before he did so she was frustrated that she continued to go to great lengths to get republicans to do things but she didn't think they were negotiating. she didn't think they ever had any mention of cooperating -- intention of corporate is a lot of frustration came from that. >> i see the questions that have the most votes that they want you to ask, i've been very impressed with speaker pelosi's ability to bring together the diverse sections of the democratic party than on the challenging issues. what strategies did you identify how she was able to do this?

>> that is a great question and one that i spent a lot of time thinking about. this is always been a great sinker when you think about it it stands in great contrast to the republican speaker who preceded her. the house more or less fell apart while paul ryan -- were in charge of the republican caucus. they were unable to keep their caucus together and a lot of them said well their caucus is so diverse and you have those unreasonable freedom caucus people in people from the liberal district more conservative districts and urban in rural districts to the democratic caucus is far more diverse than their public and caucus but i think both demographically and ideologically and there have been some quite fractious disagreements between different factions of the caucus.

but she is very good and from the time she became the democratic leader she is vice at a premium on the rules of the house to make it more painful for members to vote against the caucuses position and she can be very tough in that regard. similar to her mothering strategies she wields its very expertly and she's good at letting people know that she's not mad at you, just disappointed and that feeling of disappointment is very acute. if you cross her you may live to regret it. but it comes down to the negotiating strategies. there are certain tips and

tricks we can point to. what i ended up concluding in a larger sense is that it really is just an incredible understanding of human nature on her part. she has incredible memory for details and people and never forget the face and always knows not only who you are. much less remembering all their names and where they come from. she knows your spouse and your parents and your pets and what your prior decide what issues you're interested in and the make up of your district and what might be difficult for you to do politically. >> she scott all of that in a file in her head and she just knows all of the different people. she maintains those relationships. she makes everybody feel they've been listened to and been listened to and been heard in a lot of times that's all it takes.

she seems to have endless time to listen to people and she will kind of wear them out. if she's trying to talk someone into something she will just keep them in the negotiating session until they give up and relent. >> i want to recognize we have four or 500 people on our attendance list here. before a off next questioner want to thank everyone for coming and there'll be a separate niche for this. you can buy it on politics and prose or on line or the ordering thing that they can tell you about. thank you all for being here and the next question follows on what you were just talking about which is did you talk with nancy pelosi about what it was like growing up in a political family

and the reason i heard an echo was that faces and names and writing thank you notes, and wondering whether she talks about what her political background was like and how was applied? >> absolutely. her father was a congressman from baltimore when she was born in by the time she was seven he had become the mayor of baltimore and this is old-school democratic machine or been politics where there is patronage and all of the different demographics of the city have a political boss who controls them. i kept my thank u. can see a lot of that old-school political style and the legislative tactics. at the same time a lot of what i

try to do in the early part of this book was refocused attention on her mother because it's so natural to see the political heritage of her father she has always taken pains to say that she was shaped equally by the influence of her mother and she talks very openly which i think is interesting about how her mother felt stifled in her life and how her mother was ever able -- never able to achieve her goals because she was a woman and her mother wanted to be an auctioneer, wanted to go to law school and market and sell beauty products that she had invented and patented and her husband would not give her a signature which women needed 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 not afraid to get up in people's faces. there's a story that once she punched a poll worker in the

face issue is mad at and she ran a lot of the political operations for her husband. she never got credit. she wasn't the one with her name on the ballot but she was the one running the constituent services operation. they call it they favor file in the family parlor. it was to take people's names read them on a people for services if they need 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 in the last thing i would say about her political heritage is that it's very ground-level. it's very grassroots. if you are a politician you have to don't be blocking epson over precinct that he can't just run a campaign with a bunch of expensive television ads. you've really got to get out there and pound the pavement and get to work. that's still the advice you give

to candidates that she approves to run for office and is still the way she thinks about electoral politics is blocked i block. her older brother who also later became mayor of all the moran was a great mentor to her call that human nature in the raw. i love that description of politics. >> we have time for a couple more and you can text me if we should rap it up but anyway this question has a lot of support from the voters from jessica. has nancy pelosi ever been interested in running for president or the senate and do you think that would make her more powerful? >> no and yes to those two questions. she has never, there was a time

when she was very up-and-coming in politics and she was newish to the house on somebody's long list of potential vice presidents to candidates but she always said she wasn't interested. she has never dropped any hints that she might be interested in a higher office. part of the repertoire you are looking up there were next round of the latter you are supposed to say no, no. i think she has been saying that for long enough that it's become believable and it is a big part of her power, very smart observation by jessica. her members know that she isn't trying to make a name for herself. her predecessor as leader of the

democrats everyone knew that he wanted to be president. he was going to run for president in 2004 and so everyone knew as much as he was guarding her interest in running a caucus in the house he also had a personal ambition at stake and knew what was going on that diverted his focus. she has never had that. no member of her caucus thinks she's just trying to pass a resume so she can get to the next rung on the ladder so that gives her credibility and telling her members that she's focused on looking out for their best interests. >> i've been told this is the last question and i'm going to go with the majority rule here. 13 people have voted on this question. hi marla -- joe asks hi molly what kind of access to did get?

>> she granted a number of interviews and i have been covering her and i interviewed her previously prior to starting work on a biography. she never invited me to her house or introduce me to her family are that kind of thing per there's a formality to her. there's a sense that she has and she, you know she has good relationships with the capitol hill press corps but she is in the chummy folksy politician that strikes you as colorful and entertaining. so i talk about this a little bit in the book. i do sort of talk about my personal feelings and reflections about the reporting process and i never feel like i really got inside her head in

that way. i feel like i observed her very closely and i got to understand the way she works and operates but because she is and someone who engages in public introspection jesus fundamentally at proud person and i wasn't able to fully penetrate that. >> "pelosi" is a great book and thank you all for being here. i know you're all wearing masks and i appreciate it. >> also everyone buy the book and buy it. it's a national treasure and is certainly a d.c. treasure and thank you for watching us. i guess can we sign off or can i sign up? >> 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 and the lovely conversation about a personal favorite figure of mine at least and thank you so much. i do in courage the audience to buy the book from politics and prose. your patronage is what is allowing us to stay up and running right now. those book sales are really crucial and also we are offering you the option tonight to donate to politics and prose. we are accepting donations and we really appreciate everyone he comes in. but definitely purchase "pelosi" by molly ball. we have a lot of other great events coming up down the pipeline. click on the politics and prose logo to find out until then stay

well, stay well read and take care everybody. by all.

>> host: joining us on booktv is author nick adams and his book is just out. "trump and churchill" defenders of western civilization. mr. adams what do president trump and winston churchill have in common? >> guest: it's great to be with you. donald trump w