After forty years in the marble maze of Washington, Nancy Pelosi is finally stepping off the stage. The former Speaker of the House announced on Thursday that she will not seek reelection.
President Trump, her old adversary, wasted no time reacting. “The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America. She was evil, corrupt, and only focused on bad things for our country,” he told Fox News’s Peter Doocy. “She was rapidly losing control of her party.”
He couldn’t resist one more jab: “I’m very honored she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice. Nancy Pelosi is a highly overrated politician.”
Pelosi, 85, says she won’t seek a twentieth term. Her four decades in the House made her the first woman to wield the Speaker’s gavel — and one of the most divisive figures ever to hold it.
She was Trump’s relentless foil, turning Congress into a battlefield of subpoenas and headlines. After the first impeachment, she gloated: “This president is impeached for life regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of Mitch McConnell. There is nothing the Senate can do to ever erase that.”
Then came the famous tear — her ripping up of Trump’s 2020 State of the Union speech, a gesture as theatrical as it was personal.
“She’s a sick puppy in my opinion, she really is,” Trump said weeks later. “She’s got a lot of problems.”
Pelosi returned the venom this week, calling him “a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth,” and agreeing when CNN repeated the phrase back to her.
Even after stepping down as Democratic leader, she remained a power center — the hand still on the lever, the voice still in the room. She helped nudge her party away from Joe Biden after his faltering debate performance last year.
But as she exits, the party she shaped is already rewriting her legacy. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called her “the greatest Speaker of all time,” saying, “The United States is a much better nation today because Nancy Pelosi dedicated her life to serving the children, the climate, the country and the American people.”
Thankful for the incredible leadership, transformational legacy and powerful legislative impact of the Honorable Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.
She is the Greatest Speaker of All Time. pic.twitter.com/xr6YqXtYbA
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) November 6, 2025
So ends the Pelosi era.
Thank you, San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/OP8ubeFzR6
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) November 6, 2025
