Atlantic Magazine: 'Nancy Pelosi Will Announce that She’s Stepping Down'

The Atlantic magazine on Tuesday published an article suggesting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would resign from her leadership role “in the not-so distant future.”

“Sometime in the not-so-distant future, probably after next year’s midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will announce that she’s stepping down” the Laurene Powell Jobs-owned publication wrote.

“Her top deputies… aspire to her job, but they’re also in their early 80s, and most Democrats in and out of Congress are counting on them to step aside too. Of course, they all have stock responses denying that anyone is ever going anywhere,” the article continued. “But the day is coming.”

“Democratic members of Congress won’t talk about any of this publicly, as if Pelosi might suddenly appear and pull their hearts from their chests,” Atlantic added before offering their elevator pitch for the next House speaker. “Pretty much every Democrat in Congress and beyond is confident that Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York will be the next speaker of the House, if Democrats manage to hold on to their majority next year.”

Similar pronouncements of Pelosi’s resignation occurred earlier in 2021 and 2020, when USA Today published a “fact check” article that defended Pelosi against rumors of resignation contingent on the outcome of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

“Fact check: Nancy Pelosi will not resign if Donald Trump is acquitted in impeachment trial,” the title read.

Again, equivalent declarations emerged before the 2020 election asserting Pelosi would resign. “Social media users have been sharing content online that claims Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that if President Trump wins, she will resign,” Reuters published.

But the report continued, “Reuters could not find any record of Pelosi saying this. A declaration of this kind by the speaker of the House would have been widely reported on by news organizations.”

In the Spring of 2020, calls for Pelosi to resign forced FactCheck.org to debunk the myth of “fictitious headlines about Pelosi.”

“Numerous websites are spreading a false story claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘promises to resign’ if President Donald Trump is reelected. The story originated on a website that calls its content satire, but has since been shared as if it were true,” the site wrote.