ANNAPOLIS, Md. — As she prepares to leave Washington after nearly 40 years in Congress, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is taking stock of the ceilings she has broken — as well as the ones that remain intact.
“I always thought the American people were much more ready for ‘Madam President’ than Congress was for ‘Madam Speaker,’ because it is a marble ceiling,” she said. “It’s not a glass ceiling; it’s a marble ceiling.”
Pelosi recalled the gendered resistance she faced when she first ran for speaker. “They said, ‘Who said she could run?’ And I said to them, ‘I don’t want you voting for me because I’m a woman, but I don’t want you voting against me because I’m a woman.’”
Pelosi suggested that sort of attitude could serve a female candidate well. And she still thinks Americans are receptive to female leaders, though she quipped that she may not see a woman president in her lifetime “because I’m old.”
“But it will come sometime. There’s just no question about it,” she said.
In a wide-ranging interview with MS NOW — touching on everything from the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown to referring to President Donald Trump as “the creature” — Pelosi dismissed concerns that Democrats should shy away from nominating a woman for president after the failed bids of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
She praised Clinton as “the most qualified person of a generation” to run for president, and Pelosi credited former Vice President Harris for a “great campaign” under difficult circumstances.
”She turned out so many more people than who would have voted,” Pelosi said, arguing that Harris deserves more credit for limiting Democratic losses. She estimated that, without Harris, Democrats would have lost “probably” 14 more House seats.
Pelosi also addressed her role in Joe Biden stepping aside during the 2024 race — a move for which she has been both credited and blamed.
In early July 2024, after Biden said there was no decision to make about whether he was running — because he was the Democratic nominee — Pelosi went on “Morning Joe” and called that conclusion into question.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi said.
Her interview became a key turning point in the effort to get Biden to step aside. But Pelosi downplayed her influence.
“The only thing I asked the president to do are two things — which I get more credit or blame than I deserve — and that is that I wanted him to have other pollsters at the table … and I wanted him to assure the public that he could serve the term,” she said.
“They didn’t agree with that, and so he then decided to step aside,” she said. “It was his decision.”
The episode strained Pelosi’s decadeslong relationship with Biden. In December 2025, Pelosi told USA Today that she hadn’t spoken with Biden since her “Morning Joe” interview. But asked Monday whether she had spoken with the former president since, Pelosi said she had, though she declined to say when or in what context.
“It would be up to him to tell people when we spoke,” she said.
A Biden spokesperson confirmed to MS NOW that the two recently had lunch, but declined to give further details. It marks the first known meeting of the political duo — and a possibly thawing of their relationship — since Biden’s departure from the 2024 race.
As far as her legislative legacy, she pointed to the Affordable Care Act as “the source of greatest pride,” along with dramatically increasing the number of women in Congress — from a dozen Democrats when she first entered Congress in 1987 to nearly 100 today.
Pelosi also pointed to one surprising moment as an important achievement: bringing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak before Congress in 2022. “It felt so reminiscent of Churchill coming to Congress after Pearl Harbor,” Pelosi said. “To me, it brought so many things together. It was about peace, it was about the role of Congress. It was about a brave president, brave people, fighting for democracy.” As for this president, there’s clearly no love lost between Pelosi and Trump. At one point during the interview, she referred to Trump as “the creature” that’s in the White House now. She also didn’t hold back about the current, Republican-controlled Congress. When asked if the institution had been broken, she said it had — “on the side of Republicans.” She specifically pointed to the most recent — and now record-breaking — shutdown at DHS. “We were prepared to vote for what the Senate did … which was to vote for the Department of Homeland Security, except ICE,” Pelosi said. “We were thinking the next day that we would probably be voting for that, except the Republicans said they wouldn’t do that. So when you’re saying what is enough, go ask them. Go ask them,” she said. Pelosi argued that many of the problems with this current Congress stem from the extraordinary deference that Republicans have paid to Trump. “It’s not just the House,” she said. “It’s the whole Congress that’s just said to the president, ‘As you wish.’” Still, she defended the institution she’s molded — and that’s molded her — for the past 40 years, arguing that Congress could come back and reassert its authority. “I don’t think people think Congress is irretrievable,” she said. Emily Gold and Lillie Boudreaux contributed to this report.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet." Recommended
