Vice President Mike Pence snubbed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she called him after January 6 to talk about invoking the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump.
Pelosi wrote about the experience in her forthcoming memoir, The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, which will be released Tuesday.
She recalled how after the January 6 Capitol attack, ‘the Democratic leadership discussed asking the vice president to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the vice president and a majority of Cabinet members to certify that a president is unable to discharge the duties of the office.’
She and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ‘placed a call to Vice President Pence about this possibility,’ Pelosi’s book reveals, according to the Guardian.
‘The vice president’s office kept us on hold for 20 minutes,’ Pelosi wrote, adding that she was ‘thankfully’ at home ‘so I could empty the dishwasher and put in a load of laundry.’
Vice President Mike Pence (left) snubbed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (right) when she called him after January 6 to talk about invoking the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump
‘Ultimately, Vice President Pence never got on the phone with us or returned our call,’ she said.
Throughout the book, Pelosi pushes that Trump is mentally unwell.
She said that by January 6, ‘I knew Donald Trump’s mental imbalance.’
The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House will be released Tuesday
‘I had seen it up close,’ Pelosi continued. ‘His denial and then delays when the COVID pandemic struck, his penchant for repeatedly stomping out of meetings, his foul mouth, his pounding on tables, his temper tantrums, his disrespect for our nation’s patriots, and his total separation from reality and actual events.’
‘His repeated, ridiculous insistence that he was the greatest of all time,’ the House Speaker added.
Pelosi reveals she would get calls from Trump, often late at night.
In one such call, Trump blamed former President Barack Obama for the missile strikes in Syria that he had just ordered.
Eventually Pelosi told the president it was time to go to bed.
‘It’s midnight. I think you should go to sleep,’ Pelosi said.
She also recalled being told at a 2019 memorial service for a prominent psychiatrist by ‘doctors and other mental health professionals’ that they were ‘deeply concerned that there was something seriously wrong’ with Trump.
‘And that his mental and psychological health was in decline,’ Pelosi recalled.
