Transcript of Speaker Pelosi Interview on MSNBC's Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace

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San Francisco – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC's Deadline: White House to discuss her Congressional delegation to Ukraine and Poland, the draft Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade and other news of the day. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Nicolle Wallace. Joining us now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Madam Speaker, thank you for making some time for us today. I know it's been a really busy couple of weeks.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, thank you. It's wonderful, always, to be with you, Nicolle.

Nicolle Wallace. So here's what – here's what I haven't heard from Democrats yet, and I know the House has moved to protect abortion rights, so I'm not asking you this in your role as Speaker, but as your role as a leader of your party. Democrats and Republicans decided Roe for the very reasons you said in that clip we played: privacy. Democrats and Republicans affirm Roe in Casey. They saw, also — Democratically- and Republican-appointed Justices saw privacy as worthy of protecting. All the Republicans on this Supreme Court didn't vote to overturn it. That's how radical it is, and to Charlie's point, how do you make sure that your party's messaging keeps you where you are, which is in the mainstream of public opinion and that Republicans don't successfully turn themselves into the ones advocating for the mainstream when they are not? They are way out of the mainstream on this.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, thank you, Nicolle, for focusing on this very important issue in the lives of the American people, America's families, America's women, of course. The – Roe v. Wade was not an extreme position. Roe v. Wade was a compromise. It weighs equities in terms of timing and all the rest. We have to make sure we keep the focus on enshrining Roe v. Wade in the law so that there cannot be undue burdens placed on it in different states in the union to overturn a woman's right to choose. Now, when you hear the debate now, the Republicans are saying, ‘Oh, they want this, they want that.' No, we want this calibrated position that was declared by the Supreme Court, really upheld by Casey. About fourteen times there have been legal decisions addressing the precedent and the privacy that is contained in Roe v. Wade. So again, we are – in other words, let's not take our eye off the ball.

The Republicans want to say, ‘Let's talk about how the leak came out.' No, we're talking about what this means in the lives of the American people and our commitment to the calibration that is contained in Roe v. Wade, and we want to enshrine that in the law. We already passed that in the House months ago. The Senate will take it up on Wednesday. It will take us down a path, and we have to keep fighting until that right is protected. Because I have very serious concerns about what that means in the lives – you know, I had five children in six years and one week. I have to add the one week. So you know I appreciate and respect the differences that we have in our own lives, but the fact is it's not up to the Justices of the Supreme Court or Members of Congress to determine the size and timing of America's families.

Nicolle Wallace. Part of how we got here – and I'm, to be blunt, partly to blame – is Republicans have been maniacally focused on filling the Supreme Court with nominees who would do just this. They've been focused on it, and Republicans have a lot more voters who vote on Supreme Court picks and nothing else. It's how they plugged their nose and vote for Donald Trump. They say so. How do Democrats do the opposite and make sure that the Court, and making sure that we don't have five Justices – that excludes George W. Bush's pick for Chief Justice – don't take away a Constitutional right? How do you match the intensity, at an emotional gut level, on the other side?

Speaker Pelosi. You're right. There has been a single focus on the part of the Republicans, and I put some of the – all of this at the doorstep of Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell had over and above his priority to put Justices on the Court that would overturn a woman's right to choose. It was not only how people voted for President, but it was how they voted for – in the Senate. I do think that once we win in this election in November, which we fully intend to do, and we have a couple more just, Senators who are pro-choice, we'll be able to enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. And that means we have to win two more who are pro-choice, but also who are willing to pull back the filibuster in order to do that with 51 votes.

So again, you're right, though. We often wonder, why don't people understand when they vote for President that it's about the third branch of government? That this President will appoint — and it's not just the Supreme Court, it's all of the Justices along the way. Sometimes it really just takes something as appalling — and such an assault on privacy, on precedent, on the Constitution, on personal liberty and the rights of women and families in our country — that bring people's focus into, this is what your vote means in the election and how it affects the courts and how it affects you.

Nicolle Wallace. You and I are both from the states in which this right probably isn't at risk — in California and New York — but Claire McCaskill, our friend, isn't. And she fears that in Missouri, as soon as this decision — if the majority opinion does represent where the Court will go, and there's no reason to think it doesn't, based on Justice Roberts' comments — that in her state, abortion will become illegal immediately. What do we do, you know, starting in July? I mean, what is the – because I hear you, and I have heard other Democrats talk about how motivating this could be. It could change the tide of midterm history, but this is, I think, a right-now crisis for a lot of women in this country. What do we do for them right now?

Speaker Pelosi. Yes, I think we have – I think you're absolutely right. We have to be – have to have clarity in what this draft decision means so that the final decision doesn't go that far. The Chief Justice has said this is — this is authentic, but it is not final. I don't want to use the word ‘authentic' — it's real, but not final.

So again, Lincoln said: 'Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything — without it, nothing.'

And women just have to weigh in. I don't think there's a good outcome here, but I think there's a better outcome than what we have seen in the first draft, which is radical. It just dispenses with precedent, even though some of these candidates for — when they were candidates for confirmation, said they supported it — as what you've seen over and over and — they support the precedent and what it means. Especially the precedent that has repeatedly been reinforced.

But again, you are completely right. This cannot wait. That's why, right now, instead of people going off on what the Republicans would like us to talk about, the leak — no, we're talking about your life, the life of women in our country and how we have, again, a calibration of all of this in Roe v. Wade and how we must have it be enshrined as the law of the land. They will make charges about it, and we have to stay very clear and very focused about what it is and what it means in people's lives. This is a severe danger to women. It is a severe danger to the Constitution of the United States. It's a severe danger to other rights of privacy that are in the Constitution. But again, it's the here and now. The here and now and the focus that we must have.

Nicolle Wallace. We woke up — was it a week ago? And you're here and now was in Kyiv. And I know from talking to someone there, it was a big deal for you to show up there. I wonder if you can tell us what President Zelenskyy needs that he still isn't getting. Or if those sort of pleas for weapons have been answered, and tell us if you have thoughts about the stories over the last two days about American intelligence sharing enough to help them make decisions about taking out some very senior Russian generals and perhaps even that flagship.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, starting with that, as a person involved in intelligence for more than 25 years in the Congress, the first person in the leadership to have a security credential, I am very concerned about newspapers reporting if I don't confirm or deny what that report is — but I don't think it's helpful to have that kind of reporting. I say that with all of the respect in the world, and I protected the rights of — of the press to be protected when they put information out there, that the burden of proof has to be on the government to prove them harmful in any event. But I don't think it's helpful to say — whether it's true or not, I can't confirm. But what I do know, it's not helpful.

In terms of what we did: we went there, very proud of President Biden and what he has done to unify – unify us in Congress. We will have bipartisanship when we pass this legislation. Very unifying within NATO, bringing countries together in timing and the rest — that we all shared the same values, had to come to it in timing, and we went there very prayerfully. Before we went in, we had our moments of silence and prayer in our own faith traditions about what it meant.

And we were very, of course, impressed by President Zelenskyy. He is quite remarkable. We know that he is, from what we have seen in the press and in his presentation to Congress, but what we did see more of in our meetings with him — we had one meeting and then another dinner meeting, in addition to that — was his complete knowledge of the intricacies and the differentiation among weapons systems. The values that we bring to the humanitarian assistance, whether they're refugees, whether they're displaced within the country, or whether they're under fire in Ukraine. The knowledge that he had about his own economy and how it was dependent on freeing up the port so they could export the bread for the world — and that's a humanitarian issue as well.

And again, the economic — he wants to — he needed economic help to pay the troops and to pay the teachers for the children. He autographed my flag, which I had — which I was given by many of the grassroots people with their thanks and friendship and that, and he signed it. About — this is all about the children. Of course, I love that.

But we had a great delegation. We had the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who knows sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. A Member of the Armed Services Committee and Intelligence Committee who knows weapons, weapons, weapons. And the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who — Adam Schiff — well, I said Greg Meeks, Chairman of Foreign Affairs; Adam Schiff, Chair of Intelligence; Jim McGovern, Chair of the Rules Committee and an expert on hunger security, food security; and then Jason Crow, Member of Intel and Armed Services, who knows the weapons systems so well. And it was interesting to see, with all the knowledge that the House Members brought to it all, how up to date and just so informative was — Zelenskyy. And he's remarkable.

He's a hero to the world. We felt very honored to be meeting with him, and he started out by being very grateful to the people of the United States for the help that we have given him, very grateful to President Biden for his leadership in support of the people of Ukraine. And we brought our admiration and commendation to the people of Ukraine for their courage in fighting for democracy, because that's what this fight is about.

Nicolle Wallace. Madam Speaker, do you support his request for the Biden Administration and Congress to designate Russia a state sponsor of terror?

Speaker Pelosi. Absolutely. I've been advocating that for a while. If Russia is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, tear up the list. Because here you have the leader of a country, a nuclear power, a country invading another country, and in the – in doing so, threatening tactical – use of tactical, nuclear tactics. You have a President of a country who has turned his own soldiers into such acts of violence, raping children – little girls, eleven years old, repeatedly, in front of their mothers or raping their mothers in front of the children. Taking children and kidnapping and sending them – see, I'm all about the children, as you probably know.

That's been my whole reason, that's my ‘why I'm in Congress' – about the children. And the acts of violence that are outside the circle of civilized human behavior, and then as a coward, Putin is – Zelenskyy is a hero. Putin is a coward. He's fighting – instead of fighting a war, he's fighting against civilians. He's fighting against children. He's using that as a weapon of war. So I think, absolutely, that they should be on that list of state sponsored terrorists, and I'm hoping that will happen. Now, I've been advocating for it for a while, and I think – it's a discretion of the President to do that.

Since we – President Zelenskyy a while back, early on, made that suggestion in conversations I had with him, but I've been on that place for a while anyway. But now, their parliament, their parliament passed a – since we left – passed a resolution asking the House and Senate to do just that: place Russia on that list, and I still think it's the prerogative of the President.

There's some legalities involved in how global is their violence and terrorism, but nonetheless, I think it must happen. And when it happens – this is why it's important. It happens, it strengthens sanctions, sanctions, sanctions. It makes it easier to implement the sanctions. It has secondary sanctions in it as well. I think it's very important to do.

Nicolle Wallace. I mean, I appreciate your candor. I mean, ‘If they don't belong on the list, we should tear up the list.' That's how, I think, a clear-eyed person who covers the atrocities in Bucha and the use of rape of children and women as a weapon of war, you're right. If they're not on the list, we should rip it up, as someone smart just said a few moments ago.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, not mincing words today. Thank you very much for spending some time with us today.

Speaker Pelosi. Pleasure. Thank you. We'll pass the bill, I'm hoping, next week — to send additional military, economic, humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. And it will be very strongly bipartisan. Thank you, Nicole.

Nicolle Wallace. Come on back when that happens. We'd love to talk more about exactly what is in that. It's a huge package, and I think people gloss over all that is in there because you're right, it is helping him do what you just said – run his country at this point and his economy. Thank you so much, Madam Speaker.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure. Thank you.

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