Punchbowl News: JMart and Burns on Pelosi in their new book
Count us as very excited for Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’ new book “This Will Not Pass.” It comes out May 3, and you should order it. In fact, tell your friends to order it from their local bookstores.
Thanks to Burns and Martin – we worked with both of them at Politico – we got some juicy nuggets for you on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Burns and Martin sat down with Pelosi twice for this book, which covers the end of the Trump era and the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency.
→ Pelosi resented that she had to “beg” her Democratic colleagues to give her the job as speaker again. “The experience of begging for support was wearing on her. .. Pelosi was the only Democrat in the chamber — the only Democrat alive — who had already served as Speaker, who had shown she could do the legislative arithmetic and twist the necessary arms to get things done. And yet [her fellow Democrats] were making her grovel. ‘At this point in my life, I don’t need this,’ she vented.
“Her victory in holding onto the speakership, ‘seemed like a joyless one.’ Pelosi expressed “her frustration with unusual vehemence that day, discussing her political future in a way she rarely did around colleagues. ‘You couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to run for Speaker again,’ Pelosi said.”