House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was planning to retire in 2016, that was until Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, according to USA Today.
“After three decades as a congresswoman from California, nearly half of that time as the leader of the House Democrats, Pelosi said she was getting ready to take a breath, dote on her nine grandchildren, perhaps write her memoirs. At seventy-six years old, she was well past the retirement age for almost every workplace except Congress,” Susan Page of USA Today writes in her upcoming book “Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power.”
But, Trump threw a wrench in her plans with his surprise victory in 2016. She said the shock she felt “was physical; it was actually physical.”
“I was like, ‘How could it be that person is going to be president of the United States?’” Pelosi told Page. It wasn’t just that the glass ceiling for women in American politics had been left intact. “That was saddening, but the election of Donald Trump was stunningly scary, and it was justified to be scared. How could they elect such a person – who talked that way about women, who was so crude and … to me, creepy.”
She believed Donald Trump was unfit for office and with him in the White House, she was not confident her policies would be protected.
So, she remained in Congress, becoming the unyielding counterpart to Trump, and was consistently able to get under his skin during his one term in the White House, especially when Democrats regain majority in the House in 2018.
Even though she did have plans to retire if Clinton won, some of those closest to her doubted that she would actually do it. It is not clear it she has any plans to retire soon.
