House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told HuffPost in an interview published Monday that she is confident Democrats will win the House of Representatives, and that she is the best candidate to be Speaker of the House.
The interview notes that Pelosi “is mapping out her speakership before waiting to see if Democrats win control of the House”:
Pelosi is confident about two things ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections: that Democrats will win back the House, and that she’s the best one to lead them forward as speaker once again.
“I know the territory,” Pelosi said in a recent interview, between bites of a chocolate gelato waffle cone in a suburban Maryland cafe. “And I’m really good at what I do.”
Pelosi told HuffPost that she does not want to impeach President Donald Trump — though other leaders, including her deputy, suggested that Trump should be impeached for “treason” after he held a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year.
In a separate interview with the Washington Post, Pelosi struck a similar note about her ambition to return as Speaker: ““Nobody is indispensable. But I do think that I am best qualified to take us into the future, protect the Affordable Care Act, to do our infrastructure bill and the rest. Stepping down this path, I know the ropes.”
Pelosi has already been Speaker of the House once before, when Democrats held the House from 2007 to 2011. She infamously pushed Obamacare through the House before members had read the massive bill — a decision that cost Democrats control of the chamber.
But Pelosi ruled her caucus with an iron fist — even in the minority — and remains one of the party’s most prolific fundraisers, funneling cash to candidates across the country, ensuring that almost every candidate who wins owes her political allegiance.
She told HuffPost that she considers criticism of her age — she is 78 — to be “sexist.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.