Nancy Pelosi predicts Democrats will win the House in 2026, reflects on her career and the January 6 attack

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confident that Democrats will retake the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections and that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will hold the speaker’s gavel.

“Hakeem Jeffries is ready, he’s articulate, he’s respected by members, he’s a unifier,” Pelosi told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl during a new interview that aired Sunday on “This Week.”

“You have no doubt it will be Hakeem Jeffries?” -Karl asked.

“None,” Pelosi said.

The California Democrat, who resigned from the party’s House leadership in November 2022, announced in November that she would not run for re-election in 2026. With about a year left in her term, the longtime Democratic leader and first female House speaker spoke with Karl in Washington about her career, her relationship with President Donald Trump, and offered advice for Democrats going forward.

Pelosi said that “when” Democrats take back the House, they will need to take back the powers of Congress, which she said the current Republican-led Congress has essentially handed over to Trump.

“Right now, Republicans in Congress have abolished Congress. They just do what the president insists they do. That will end,” Pelosi said. “That ends as soon as we get the gavel.”

But on the question of whether a third impeachment trial should be held against Trump, Pelosi said it depends on the president’s actions.

“I’ve told people that the only person responsible for impeaching Donald Trump is Donald Trump. It’s not something you decide to do, it’s what violation of the Constitution you commit,” he told Karl. “So that’s not something that you say, ‘Oh, we’re going to charge him.’ But you may have subpoena power to get information from these government agencies that aren’t providing any information right now.”

When she first ran for Congress in 1987, Pelosi’s campaign slogan was “Nancy Pelosi: A Voice That Will Be Heard.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? Isn’t it funny that I became speaker of the House and of course my voice was heard, but I never thought about that,” she reflected.

Pelosi, one of 23 women in the House when she won, went on to make history as the first woman elected to be party leader, the first woman to be minority leader and, in 2007, the first woman to be speaker of the House, becoming third in line for the presidency.

“I actually never intended to run for leadership. That’s the funny thing about it because I made it: I loved my committees, my assignments and the intelligence,” Pelosi told ABC News. “But we lost in ’94, ’96, ’98, and then we got to 2000. I said, you know, being a [former] Party president, I know how to win elections. And I’m just tired of losing.”

As speaker, Pelosi helped usher in landmark legislation under President Barack Obama, including the Affordable Care Act, for which Pelosi said she hopes to be remembered.

“I’m very proud of the Affordable Care Act. I think it was a big game changer in terms of what working families need for their health and their financial health. We will continue to fight,” she said. “The health care bill was a way to meet not only the health needs, but also the financial needs of families. So if I was remembered for one thing, it would be the Affordable Care Act.”

But her contentious relationship with Trump will also be a defining part of her legacy. That includes the viral footage of her tearing up her final State of the Union address during her first term, something Pelosi said she had not planned.

“I had no intention of going to the speech to tear it up. But I just, in the first part, I tore up a page because I was lying. And then the next page, and then the next page. And I thought it was a manifesto of lies everywhere, so I better tear up the whole speech,” Pelosi said. “But I had no intention of doing it. I thought my staff was going to die.”

Pelosi said the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters seeking to block the formal certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory was “absolutely” the darkest day of her presidency.

Her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, was with Pelosi at the Capitol that day, filming her as she was evacuated to a secure facility where she and the rest of the congressional leaders spent hours trying to return to the Capitol to finish the proceedings. The harrowing footage was featured in the 2022 HBO documentary, “Pelosi in the House.”

“What’s going on in your head? I mean, we see the images, we see the anguish, we see what’s happening to the Capitol, what’s going on in your head?” Karl asked Pelosi.

“Well, it was clear that the president of the United States had incited an insurrection. And we begged him to send in the National Guard,” Pelosi said. “Even Mitch McConnell was on the phone with us and saying, get them here right away. But they never sent them.”

“The sadness also comes from the fact that this president is trying to rewrite history, to have a different narrative of what happened that day,” Pelosi added.

“What happened that day was horrible. It was an assault on the Capitol, the symbol of democracy for the world. It was an assault on Congress, on the day we fulfilled our responsibility under the Constitution to certify the Electoral College, who was elected president, as an assault on the Constitution of the United States,” he said. “It was horrible.”

In the HBO documentary, Pelosi says Trump must “pay a price” for the attack on the Capitol.

“Have you paid a price for it?” -Karl asked.

“No, he is now president of the United States. But history will pay, he will pay a price in history.”

After Trump won the presidential election in 2024, both federal cases against Trump, including charges related to his actions leading up to and on the day of the attack on the Capitol, were dismissed. Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Trump, filed a motion to dismiss the charges because of the Justice Department’s presidential immunity policy. Trump pleaded not guilty to all federal charges against him.

With one year left in Congress, Pelosi said her priority is to return the gavel to House Democrats.

“I’m busy and focused on winning the House for Democrats, making Hakeem Jeffries the speaker of the House and getting us to a better place,” she said.

“Overall, the American people are good people. And I would like to get us back to a place where governance and politics understand that,” he added. “So what’s next for me is that, in addition to winning the House for Democrats, let’s try to get the discussion to a place that believes in the goodness of the American people, that gives them hope.”