OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Republicans are set to win the House majority and elect their own Speaker of the House, but President Joe Biden wants current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to stay. After midterm election results started being reported, the president called the Speaker to ask her to stay on, Fox News reported.
“I hope you stick,” he said to her during the call. “I know it’s family first, but I hope you stick.”
“The Speaker has not made a decision about her future. As the Speaker just stated yesterday on national TV, she will make a decision once all the votes have been counted,” her spokesman Drew Hammill said. “She’s not even thinking about her future at this moment.”
“The speaker will make an announcement when she makes an announcement,” he said. “Until then, let’s all enjoy watching Kevin McCarthy lose a speakership his party hasn’t even won in the first place.”
But the Speaker has hinted at retirement, even after she was victorious in her campaign.
Pelosi is waiting to see if Democrats maintain the majority in the House, which is still possible, though not probable, before he decides on her own future.
The 82-year-old California representative spoke to Dana Bash on the CNN show ‘State of the Union” on Sunday to talk about the midterm elections, her career and the attack on her husband Paul Pelosi.
“My decision will again be rooted in what the wishes of my family and the wishes of my caucus, but none of it will be very much considered until we see what the outcome of all of this is,” the Speaker said.
“There are all kinds of ways to exert influence,” she said. “The Speaker has awesome power. But I will always have influence.”
Her answer was similar when she spoke to anchor George Stephanopoulos when she appeared on the ABC Sunday show “This Week.”
“Right now I’m not making any comments until this election is finished, and we have a little more time to go,” she said. “I wish it was faster.”
She would not say if she thought Democrats would keep the House when she spoke on CNN.
“What we want to do is go forward in a very unified way as we go forward to prepare for the Congress at hand,” she said. “And then after some respite, get ready for the next election.”
“My purpose in all of this is to first and foremost protect our incumbents,” the Speaker said. “And that is what we have done in California and where we have seen opportunity to grow our majority. That has been our priority both in California and elsewhere. We’re disappointed as to what happened in New York, because that is a setback in terms of our calculations before, but we’ll see, there’s so many boats still out.”
She was also furious with Republicans who she believed were not respectful after her husband was attacked.
“We’ve been so comforted by the outpouring of so many prayers and good wishes, and even people saying, ‘I wasn’t going to vote, but now I’m going to vote, because this has gone too far,’” she said to Stephanopoulos.
“There’s nobody that’s disassociating themselves from the horrible response that they gave,” she said to Bash, saying that the responses have been “ridiculous, disrespectful” and “disgraceful.”
On the eve of Election Day, when the Democrats were predicted to be defeated by Republicans in the House, the Speaker said the attack on her husband Paul Pelosi would affect her decision to retire, CNN reported.
In an exclusive interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper the host said that there has “been a lot of discussion about whether you’d retire if Democrats lose the House.”
The speaker responded by saying that the “decision will be affected about what happened the last week or two,” which got Cooper to ask, “Will your decision be impacted by the attack in any way?”
“Yes,” the Speaker said.
“It will?” the anchor asked.
“Yes,” she said.