Pelosi Defends Impeachment of ‘Rogue President’ Trump

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed America’s founders anticipated the rise of “a rogue president” but failed to foresee “a rogue Senate,” according to remarks she made in an interview with USA Today’s Susan Page, where she once again launched attacks on President Donald J. Trump while defending her own legacy in Washington.

Pelosi, a longtime Democrat power broker who helped drive the resistance to Trump during his first term and beyond, attempted to downplay the president’s political resurgence as she accused him of “cruelty and corruption.”

“I’m really not here to talk about the incoherence, the cruelty, the corruption of the current president of the United States,” Pelosi said, brushing aside questions about Trump’s renewed dominance on the national stage.

The 85-year-old lawmaker, who has announced plans to retire from Congress at the conclusion of her term in January 2027, told USA Today that her proudest legislative achievement was the passage of the Affordable Care Act, while describing her failure to enact sweeping gun control legislation as her greatest regret.

Pelosi also revisited the two impeachments of President Trump that she presided over as speaker, insisting both efforts were constitutionally justified and unavoidable.

“The person most responsible for impeaching President Trump when I was speaker was President Trump. He gave us no choice,” Pelosi said. “If he crosses the border again. But that’s not an incidental thing. There has to be cause. There has to be reason. We had review. This was a very serious, historic thing.”

She went on to argue that the Constitution’s framers anticipated executive abuse of power, but not what she described as institutional failure in the Senate.

“Our founders knew that there could be a rogue president, and that’s why they put impeachment in the Constitution,” she said. “They didn’t know there’d be a rogue president at the same time a rogue Senate that didn’t have the courage to do the right thing. It was bipartisan in the Senate, but it wasn’t enough.”

Asked whether Democrats should pursue impeachment again if they regain control of the House, Pelosi stopped short of an endorsement but declined to rule it out entirely.

“There has to be cause,” she said, emphasizing that constitutional thresholds must be met.

Pelosi repeated the long-disputed allegation that Trump “incited an insurrection” on January 6, 2021, a charge the president and his allies have consistently rejected. She also criticized Trump’s use of presidential pardon powers, despite the Constitution granting the president broad and explicit authority in that area.

Trump supporters have countered that his pardons fall squarely within executive power and note that he was the first president to call for National Guard deployment ahead of the January 2021 unrest in an effort to protect the U.S. Capitol.

Pelosi’s comments about “rogue government” drew renewed attention not only for their partisan framing, but also for what critics say is an attempt to deflect from mounting scrutiny of her own financial record.

A recent New York Post investigation reported that Pelosi and her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, amassed more than $130 million in stock market profits over her 37-year congressional career — a staggering return of roughly 16,930 percent, outperforming every major stock index and even eclipsing the long-term gains of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Before Pelosi entered Congress in 1987, the couple disclosed between $610,000 and $785,000 in stock holdings. Today, their estimated net worth reportedly exceeds $280 million, supplemented by high-end real estate holdings in San Francisco and Napa Valley worth millions more.

Mandatory financial disclosures reveal frequent, highly profitable options trading in sectors directly influenced by congressional action, including semiconductor policy and federal infrastructure spending. Republicans and ethics watchdogs have long argued the trades raise serious questions about insider access and conflicts of interest.

“Nancy Pelosi’s true legacy is becoming the most successful insider trader in American history,” said Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “If anyone else had turned $785,000 into $133.7 million with better returns than Warren Buffett, they’d be retiring behind bars.”

Despite Pelosi’s repeated invocations of constitutional duty during the Trump years, critics argue her rhetoric about “rogue presidents” and “rogue Senates” rings hollow when weighed against her own financial fortune and decades-long grip on power.

“She’s projecting,” a senior GOP aide said. “Every time Pelosi accuses someone else of abusing power, it’s because she’s worried people will start asking how she made her fortune while running Congress.”