Nancy Pelosi loses her last major battle with Donald Trump

Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has failed in the last major political goal of her storied career: preventing Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

Trump and Pelosi are two of the politicians who have most defined 21st century American electoral politics and have been bitter political rivals for years. Pelosi served as speaker during the second half of Trump’s tenure in the White House, with the two sparring frequently and publicly on legislative issues over the years.

Between the political disagreements, they also traded personal barbs and had perhaps the most contentious political relationship of the past decade. Trump refers to her as “Crazy Nancy,” while Pelosi says she won’t even say the president-elect’s name.

After a hammer-wielding assailant violently attacked her husband, Paul, in their San Francisco home, Trump mocked the assault. “By the way, how is her husband?” he asked at a convention in 2023 to laughter.

And at his final campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump referred to Pelosi as an “evil, sick, crazy b…”, stopping short of completing the sentence. (His campaign said he meant to say “brain dead”).

The 2024 presidential race was almost certainly the last major battle between the two. Pelosi was instrumental in the events that led to Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. She privately pushed for President Joe Biden to drop his re-election bid after his debate against Trump in June, when his performance sparked concerns about his age and ability to launch a successful campaign.

It was her push, widely believed to have been what finally convinced Biden, after three weeks of backroom drama, to withdraw.

She told The Guardian last month that she pushed for his exit because she didn’t believe the election’s “run” as it was would result in a Biden victory and that she vowed never to let Trump return to the White House .

“Elections are decisions. You decide to win. I decided a while ago that Donald Trump will never set foot in the White House again as President of the United States or in any other capacity,” Pelosi said.

“So when you make a decision, you have to make every decision in favor of winning … and the most important decision of all is the candidate.”

The move was a gamble that ultimately didn’t pay off. It came late in the race, and some Democrats were uneasy about the prospects of a Harris nomination, despite Biden’s declining poll numbers after the debate. Whether Biden could have beaten Trump after that debate will remain one of the unknown questions in this tumultuous political cycle.

But one thing’s for sure: Harris didn’t, and she didn’t even come very close.

In January, both Trump and Pelosi will be back in public office for the first time since 2021, when their feud came to a head over his false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

But Pelosi, 84, no longer serves as party leader, at least in an official capacity. New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is now the defacto Democratic center of gravity in the House, with the only outstanding question being whether he takes the reins as minority leader or speaks in January, depending on how the last outstanding congressional races pan out.

Although Pelosi is no longer in leadership, she has not officially made any plans to retire yet.

This was told by Grant Davis Reeher, professor of political science at Syracuse University Newsweek that Trump and Pelosi really despise each other.

The “level of apparent animosity” between the two is “different and reminds me of the 19th century,” he said.

“Trump has involved female members of his own family in his business dealings, he comes from a very male-dominated industry. Having to deal with a woman in that powerful role may have irritated him,” he said to explain Trump’s dislike of Pelosi.

“Pelosi is a champion of women’s rights and was a female pioneer in Congress, and Trump’s many derogatory comments directed at women probably annoyed her more than anyone. So I think there is a personal element to the mutual hostility.”

Pelosi, meanwhile, considers Trump a “threat to the American political system.”

Meena Bose, the executive dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, told Newsweek that their long-running conflict “represents the current partisan divisions in American politics.”

“Major differences on issues such as economic growth, immigration and US foreign policy, as well as several other factors, are the source of this conflict, and the election results in 2024 will be significant in assessing which views have more public support at this time,” she said.

The Pelosi-Trump feud reached a tipping point on January 6

Pelosi emerged as Trump’s top foe early in his political career, telling CNN in 2016, when he was still a long-shot candidate, that she did not believe he would ever “gain power.” The early attack foreshadowed years of bickering between the two, one a political novice and the other a veteran political machine.

But the feud reached a breaking point after the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol, when a mob of the former president’s supporters violently protested the certification of the 2020 election, whipped up by Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud.

Pelosi’s animosity toward Trump went into overdrive after Jan. 6, when she co-chaired the second impeachment trial against him in the days that followed. Video footage released earlier this year showed Pelosi describing Trump as a “domestic enemy” in the days after the riot.

She said in December 2021 that she would “never forgive” Trump for January 6.

“There is a domestic enemy in the White House. Let’s not mince words about this,” Pelosi said the day after the riot, tapes released earlier this year showed.

Trump has maintained that he has committed no wrongdoing and called Jan. 6 a “day of love.” He has accused Pelosi of participating in a partisan investigation by impeaching him and creating a House select panel to investigate the Capitol riot.

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee report intentionally fails to mention Pelosi’s failure to comply with my recommendation for troops to be used in DC, show the ‘peaceful and patriotic’ (sic) words I used, or study the cause of the protest, the election Fraud,” Trump said in one post to Truth Social in December 2022, when the committee released its final report. “WITCH HUNT!”

Pelosi and other critics blame Trump for the riot, saying his allegations of election fraud and infamous speech at the Ellipse incited the mob. Trump, for his part, has blamed Pelosi for allegedly ignoring the “recommendation that troops be used” in DC on January 6.

The Rip Heard ‘Round the World

One of the most viral moments in their feud came a year earlier, after Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, when Pelosi — who was sitting right behind him — stood up and ripped up a copy of his speech, which she has described as a “manifesto of untruths.”

The move drew praise from Democrats, then angered the president, but also angered Trump and his supporters, who saw it as disrespectful.

“He shredded the truth in his speech. He shredded the Constitution in his behavior. I shredded his State of the Union address,” Pelosi said.

Trump responded to Pelosi by suggesting that her protest was illegal.

“Well, I thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech. First of all, it’s an official document. You’re not allowed. It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law,” he said.

Just weeks earlier, Pelosi led the first impeachment against Trump for alleged abuse of power over allegations that he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate President Joe Biden, then considered a likely 2020 presidential contender.

Trump has again maintained he did nothing wrong and has said the earlier impeachment was also politically motivated, famously describing it as “presidential harassment”.

On Christmas Day 2019, he tweeted: “Why should crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a small majority in the House, be allowed to impeach the President of the United States? Got ZERO Republican votes, there was no crime, the Ukraine call was perfect, no pressure.”

Pelosi, however, saw the first impeachment trial as a matter of protecting American democracy.

“It is a fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections — the foundation of our democracy,” she said on the floor of the House in December 2019.

The State of the Union a year earlier also came with its share of drama, with Pelosi postponing the speech over security concerns amid a prolonged government shutdown she blamed on Trump.

In addition to the major scandals, the Trump era was defined in part by the daily back-and-forth between Pelosi and the then-president. In August 2019, CNN reported that they had not spoken in 10 months, despite the chairman and president typically maintaining at least a basic working relationship.

Pelosi said The Guardian last month that she doesn’t even care to say Trump’s name, adding that it’s a “grotesque word” and “up there with, like, profanity.”

“You just don’t like the word passing your lips. I just don’t. I’m afraid, you know, growing up Catholic like I am now, if you said a bad word, you could burn in hell if you didn’t have a chance to confess, then I won’t take any chances,” she said.

In May 2020, she said: “He comes in with doggy doo on his shoes and everyone who works with him has it on their shoes too.

A year earlier, Trump questioned Pelosi’s mental acuity while discussing a trade deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

“Let’s face it, she doesn’t get it,” he said at the time. “And they kind of feel like she’s disintegrating before their eyes.”