Five times Nancy Pelosi lost her cool with the media

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has spoken to reporters countless times over the years, but every now and then, she grows impatient or even outright hostile with them.

Pelosi had another viral interaction on Wednesday, this time with a correspondent for a far-right outlet, yelling at her to “shut up” when pressed about the new January 6 committee and whether she should have done more to secure the building on the day of the 2021 Capitol riot.

“Shut up! I did not refuse the National Guard! The president didn’t send it,” Pelosi said, referring to President Donald Trump. 

“Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you’re a serious journalist?” she asked before turning away.

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Here are some other times Pelosi lost her cool with various media members over the years.

‘Am I speaking English to you?’

On July 10, 2024, ABC News reporter Rachel Scott caught up with Pelosi in the halls of Congress and asked her if she had talked with then-President Joe Biden about her comments on MSNBC that day calling on him “to decide” if he was going to stay in the race.

“I’m not having any discussions with you, or anyone else, about what I talk to the president about, with all due respect,” Pelosi told Scott. “I’m not going to be making any comments today, in the hallway, about the fate of our nation, OK?”

As Scott repeatedly asked about Biden, Pelosi lost her temper.

“Am I speaking English to you? I’m not going to be making any statements about any of that right now in the hallway,” she said.

Less than two weeks later, Biden was out of the race, and Pelosi was a major part of the successful pressure campaign to make it happen.

‘Ridiculous thing’

Pelosi’s been known to have public disdain for the far-left “Squad” and its leader, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On Oct. 1, when a reporter suggested she was leading negotiations on the government shutdown, Pelosi was annoyed.

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“There was a thought from the Republicans that AOC is directing this, and she said that senators are welcome to go to her office directly. Is she driving that?” the reporter asked Pelosi.

“Why are you saying such a ridiculous thing?” Pelosi fired back.

The reporter’s question followed Ocasio-Cortez‘s appearance on MSNBC that week, where she told Republicans, “My office is open, and you are free to walk in and negotiate with me directly.”

Pelosi rejected the idea that Ocasio-Cortez is directing negotiations, emphasizing that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is leading Democrats in the talks.

“She’s wonderful, she’s a real team player, and the rest of that,” she told the reporter. “You started by saying Republicans say that she’s directing this. She is not, Hakeem Jeffries is, and this takes a lot of experience, a lot of unity from the caucus in terms of the point of view, and that’s what this is.”

‘Such a waste of my time’

Shortly after Republicans took back the House majority in 2022, Pelosi was asked, to her chagrin, if she would commit to serving a full term for her San Francisco district.

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“What is this? What is this? Don’t bother me with a question like that,” Pelosi said.

“Really, really, OK. I said what I’m going to do. You know, those kinds of questions are such a waste of my time,” she went on.

Pelosi, 85, has since remained in her seat but stepped down from her leadership position when the new House was seated in 2023. The new House Democratic Leader is Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

‘You’re always an apologist’

Pelosi clashed with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer repeatedly during an interview in October 2020 about negotiations with Republicans on a COVID-19 stimulus package.

In a surprising exchange, Pelosi grew visibly frustrated with “The Situation Room” anchor’s questions. The fireworks began when Blitzer asked Pelosi why she “won’t accept the president’s latest [coronavirus] stimulus offer.”

“I hope you’ll ask the same question of the Republicans on why they don’t want to meet the needs of the American people,” Pelosi said. “But let me say to those people because all of my colleagues — we represent these people … and their needs are not addressed in the president’s proposal. So when you say to me, ‘Why don’t you accept theirs?’ Why don’t they accept ours?”

Blitzer interjected, telling Pelosi that Americans “really need the money now” and quoted Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., touting the size of the stimulus in comparison to a relief bill passed under the Obama administration.

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“So what do you say to Ro Khanna?” Blitzer asked. 

“What I say to you is I don’t know why you’re always an apologist — and many of your colleagues [are] apologists for the Republican position,” Pelosi fired back, adding, “Ro Khanna, that’s nice, that isn’t what we’re going to do, and nobody’s waiting til February.”

“But you know what? Honest to God!” Pelosi complained at another point, when Blitzer pointed out other Democratic critics of stalling on the bill.

Pelosi was irritated throughout the interview, sarcastically thanking him for his “sensitivity to our constituents’ needs” at the end.

‘I can see you savoring it’

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Pelosi memorably snapped at then-Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack in 2013 when he asked if there was a “moral difference” between the actions of notorious abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell —who was convicted of murder that year for killing infants after they were born alive — and legal late-term abortions.

Pelosi, a Catholic who has been criticized for supporting abortion rights, was unhappy with the question.

“You’re probably enjoying that question a lot,” she said, as some other mainstream journalists in the room laughed appreciatively. “I can see you savoring it.”

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “As the mother of five children, my oldest child was six-years-old the day I brought my fifth child home from the hospital, as a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics. And that’s where you’re taking it and I’m not going there.”

The exchange drew extensive media attention at the time, but conservatives were repelled.

“The nonsequitur was pristine, completely unconnected to the subject at hand,” the Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Ferguson wrote in 2022. “It wasn’t much more than a jumble of words, amounting not to a moral case but a moralizing camouflage, an attempt to throw a flash-bang into the briefing room and get the hell out as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

Fox News Digital’s Marc Tamasco, Joseph A. Wulfsohn, and Kristine Parks contributed to this report.