Nancy Pelosi Gives First Interview Since Hammer Attack on Husband, Gets Choked Up

Speaker Pelosi gave some hints about her future in her first interview since the attack on her husband, particularly on running for leadership again, saying, “I have to say my decision will be affected [by] what happened the last week or two.”

In the now-eleven days since the brutal home invasion hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, we’ve learned plenty about the alleged attacker David DePape: he’s an ex of a noted nudist activist with a ton of QAnon conspiracy theories, he was looking for Speaker Nancy Pelosi so he could “break her kneecaps,” and he was in the country illegally despite his America-First MAGA rhetoric. And we do know that Paul Pelosi has been released from the hospital, and is recovering at home. But we haven’t heard much from House Speaker Nancy Pelsoi, outside of a vague statement she released two days after the attack.

But we are about to hear from her tonight, in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and bits of the interview have been dripping all day. On the big question of whether Pelosi would stay on as House Minority Leader after the midterm elections, or even Speaker should the Democrats somehow hold the House, the Chronicle reports Pelosi said, “I have to say my decision will be affected about what happened the last week or two.”

Obviously, CNN left some important context out of what they released, context you can only get by tuning into the Anderson Cooper program tonight. But CNN also posted a brief advance segment of the interview, where she discusses receiving the grisly news of the deadly attempt on her husband’s life, and gets pretty choked up doing so.

“I was sleeping in Washington, D.C. I had just gotten in the night before from San Francisco,” Pelosi says of the incident. “I hear the doorbell ring. I think it’s five-something [a.m.] It must be the wrong apartment. It rings again, and the bang-bang-bang-bang on the door. So I run to the door.”

“I see it's the Capitol Police,” she continues. “They say, ‘We have to come on and talk to you.’ And I'm thinking my children, my grandchildren, I never thought it would be Paul because I knew he wouldn’t be out and about.”

“At that time, we didn’t even know where he was or what his condition was,” she adds. “We just knew there was an assault on him in our home.”

Admittedly, not a ton of detail there.

The CNN interview airs Monday at 5 p.m. PT on Anderson Cooper 360.

Related: Paul Pelosi Is Out of the Hospital, Resting at Home Following Last Friday's Attack [SFist]

Image: WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 30: U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) arrives at her weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol on September 30, 2022 in Washington, DC. Speaker Pelosi held a weekly news conference to answer questions from members of the press. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)