Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover. Today's guest, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,

the top Democrat in the House, and a woman who's been interviewed many times, but in a conversation

this time that both in some of the things about her life that came out

and the raw anger that I got out of her at other points is, I think, a really different conversation

for most of what you've seen and heard from her. We covered everything from the time she told her

high school Model U.N. Club to get lost because she was having dinner with then Senator John F. Kennedy

to when I asked her if she's still running at the same speed at 77,

that she was at 67 or 57. You can hear how she responded to that. Let me tell you how this one came

about. At the end of August, the Politico magazine editor, Blake Hounschild came to me and asked me if I'd be

interested in doing a big magazine piece on Pelosi. All the complaints about her, what she's going to do about them.

I wasn't so into it. I felt like there wasn't much new to say, except I said, if I could get her

to really talk about it herself. So I gave it a shot. And after some back and forth with her office,

Pelosi agreed to the story. We set the date for the first of what we agreed would be several

conversations. Then that week after Labor Day ended up being a pretty big one for Pelosi, making a deal

with President Trump in the Oval Office over the objections of the Republican leaders for the

Hurricane Harvey funding and a three-month extension on the budget and debt ceiling. And then the next

week, making what seemed like a deal to protect

the dreamers and even getting Trump to tweet about it. She was in an interesting spot to begin with

before all that. She immediately got more interesting. The first conversation I had with her for the

magazine story that's up on the site, and I really encourage you to go read it, was over the phone.

I had been scheduled to go see her in her office, but then the vote on that deal was pushed up earlier in the day. And so she took an earlier flight back to San Francisco because she wanted to get back for her wedding anniversary. So we were chatting as she drove to Dulles. And I said to her, it must be weird. After all, she's been through and the people she's met over her

career in politics to be dealing with Donald

...