GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC HOST: Let’s bring in the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Madam President, thank you for joining us this morning. Congratulations on the result on Tuesday. I know there are still a lot of votes to be counted and anyway (ph) we have a lot of news to get to. But before we get to that, I just wanted to ask, how is your husband, Paul, doing? REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, thank you for asking and good morning. It’s one good day after another, it gets better. It will take some time. But we were so comforted by the outpouring of so many prayers and good wishes, even from people saying, “I wasn’t going to vote, but now I will because this has gone too far.” But thank you so much for asking. I will pass it on to him. STEPHANOPOULOS: Please. You know, we last spoke in September. Back then you were sure the Democrats would do well, a lone voice at the time given high inflation and President Biden’s low approval ratings. How did the Democrats do it? PELOSI: Well, first of all, thank you for recognizing that we had a different approach. It wasn’t something we ever accepted when pundits in Washington said we couldn’t win because history, history, history. Elections are about the future. I am very proud of our candidates, both our incumbents and our red-to-blue candidates. They never accepted the idolatry that they couldn’t win, they had courage, they had a purpose and they understood their territory. They also rejected calls from Washington about, oh, your message has to change. No, our message was clear — people over politics, lower costs, higher wages, safer communities. And they knew the value of a woman’s right to choose, they knew how important it was to protect our democracy, they knew the opposition between themselves and their opponents and that made them win. It wasn’t Washington saying you have to change your message, Washington saying you can’t win. I hope this is a lesson, because it really lowers the vote sometimes when people say “it’s all over” 18 months before an election. We never accepted that. STEPHANOPOULOS: Now the road to maintaining the democratic majority is still quite narrow. Democrats need to join the table of upsets that are still out there to keep control of the House. Do you see a realistic path to victory? PELOSI: Well, let me just say that it’s a completely different path than what everybody predicted. And I pay tribute, of course, to our candidates, I also give credit to our base. This — there are VIPs, our volunteers in politics, millions of doors knocking, millions of doors knocking. So they crossed a threshold. They exceeded all predictions — predictions and all. Whatever the outcome, we are on the road to taking our country to a better place than being dragged down by the other side. So we’ll see. I am disappointed with what happened in New York, that four votes could make a difference at the end of the day. But we didn’t — we didn’t give up and we didn’t give up because the quality of our candidates, the purpose of why, because this is important, and President Biden did a great job of putting our democracy on the ballot. President Obama making sure people understood that it was important for them to vote, even though there were those who said it was all over 16 — 18 months ago. So it took a lot to get to where we are, and we’ll see. I’ve said before, and you’ve heard me say it on our walk in the park, it’s like the Olympics, in half a second you can be gold, silver, bronze or honored to be an Olympian. They would all be very close matches. They continue to be. But, again, we’re very proud of the result and we’re very proud because it was a victory for the world, not for the pundits, but for the people, and the success in Nevada is a personal joy for some of us because of Harry Reid . But politically so important for the country. President, we have the White House, we have the Senate, and we’re going to have a big strong vote in the House, a very different outcome than some might expect. STEFANOPOULOS: And if the Democrats retain the majority, will you run for parliament again? PELOSI: I’m not — right now, I’m not making any comment until this election is over and we’ve got a little bit more time to go. I wish — STEPHANOPOULOS: How about… PELOSI: — It would be faster, but it’s not. STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s going to take a while to count those votes in California, I know that. How about the other side? Your Republican counterpart, Kevin McCarthy, looks like even if the Republicans win, we’re going to be talking about 219, 220, maybe 221 votes in the House. Can he rule with such a majority? PELOSI: Well, it depends on their purpose. In our House, we had such — such numbers. But we were united — we were very united in being there for — the working families of America, which dominated our discussion — although we have our differences of opinion on some issues, when it came to the main cause of the Democrats, the working families of America, there was no doubt that we would win every vote we got on the floor. And this new — new members are coming, again, a continued revitalization of the Congress that our founders intended. They are so diverse genealogically, geographically, opinionally, ethnically, gender — gender identity. It’s — it’s going to be a great lesson. They will speak to him so plainly. We have one of the newest members, future Congressman Frost, and it’s — it’s very exciting for us. So, it’s not just about what the final vote is. It has to do with what the message is and the purpose that will be demonstrated to the American people. And, again, this is about our democracy, our democracy was on the ballot, our planet was on the ballot. Personal liberty was on the ballot. These three issues are very important to young voters and were very important to our success in this election. STEPHANOPOULOS: Whatever the outcome, you said this week, quote, we need to come together, I think it’s really important to restore unity in Congress. PELOSI: In the country. STEPHANOPOULOS: What responsibility do the Democrats have there? What steps should Democrats take to unite the country? PELOSI: Well, we’ve always taken this step because we honor our oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that should be a unifying principle for us. The — when many of our bills, we worked very hard to make them bipartisan, bipartisan, bipartisan. And while the bills were bipartisan, the votes were not. So again, I come back to Abraham Lincoln. Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can achieve almost anything. Without it, practically nothing. And the point I want to make is that when the public knows what’s at stake and what’s going on there, I think we’re going to see more cooperation, again, working together to create a bill, but without voting no, take the dough, and it seems that we don’t have bipartisanship, when in fact we do in the bills, but in the votes, not necessarily. Inform the public. STEPHANOPOULOS: Before the inauguration of the new Congress in January, you have a lot of work to do in what would be a lame session in December. Probably at the top of that list, extending the debt limit because Republicans have said that if they get the majority, they will try to force concessions from Democrats in order to extend the debt limit. Do you think you can get a permanent or very long debt limit extension during the lame duck session? PELOSI: Well, I think it would be very important for us to do that. I think it’s important to note that what the Republicans have said is that they will use the vote on the debt limit as leverage to cut Medicare and Social Security. I think the public should know that. It’s a difference of opinion and I think the public needs to know who’s on their side in all of this. We cannot allow them to cut Social Security. It is an insurance program, just like Medicare. People paid into it, and Republicans can’t use it as leverage to say, we’ll only lift the debt ceiling if you cut benefits for our seniors and others on Medicare and Social Security. So we’ll see what they claim they want to do. But I think our best chance is to do it — to do it now. But again, winning the Senate gave us a lot of leverage on how we’re going to go forward if we don’t do it on the lam. But my hope would be that we could do it with the lame duck. The Constitution removes any doubt. The full faith and allegiance of the United States of America must not be — is not questioned. But this is a practice we have engaged in. And so, we should, again, lift the debt ceiling so that the full faith and credit of the United States is respected. There is great danger in even discussing not doing so. When the Republicans did this before, it lowered our credit rating. It lowered our credit — even though it didn’t actually happen, just the talk of it. Well, that’s — that’s to face the fire when we talk about the stability of our credit rating. STEPHANOPOULOS: In the face of all this news, we see that Donald Trump is planning to be re-announced as president on Tuesday. Is this good news for Democrats? PELOSI: I’m not getting into any discussion about his plans. I mean, I think it’s bad news for the country, let’s put it that way, because this is a person who undermined the integrity of our election, who broke his oath of office, who encouraged people, the strange kind of people to run, who …
