Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi- Sen. Dianne Feinstein ‘left us the way she lived- on her own terms’
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00:00 The nation today is mourning the loss of a trailblazing senator, Dianne Feinstein.
00:05 And here with me now is Dianne Feinstein's very close friend, colleague, ally, Speaker
00:10 Emeritus Nancy Pelosi.
00:14 My condolences to you, to your family.
00:16 You were neighbors in San Francisco for years.
00:18 I know your daughter, Nancy Corrin, thinks of her as an aunt, as a member of the family.
00:24 As do you.
00:25 I know this.
00:26 My children would always say, if Nancy, if Dianne and I were running against each other
00:33 for office, Nancy Corrin would probably be for Dianne.
00:36 Your own daughter.
00:37 And then Catherine said, well, then maybe I'll be for you, Catherine, her daughter.
00:41 This is for us very personal.
00:43 It's very San Francisco.
00:44 We're neighbors, we're friends.
00:46 We love each other very much.
00:48 I'm heartbroken.
00:50 But Dianne would want us all to just rise to the occasion.
00:55 And I want you to know, but I want everyone to know, this is an iconic figure.
01:01 This is a figure who every now and then someone comes along like this that you you think,
01:08 wow, she came into power as mayor under the most dire of circumstances, such strength,
01:15 such dignity.
01:17 She took the city with her in all of this.
01:21 And everything that she did, she did was a vision of doing some great thing and knowing
01:26 what she was talking about, always reading in that.
01:29 So so she was great.
01:31 She was I use the word iconic more than we should probably.
01:36 This is the definition, the personification of iconic.
01:41 And I mean, there were there were so many sides to her.
01:44 She was a friend.
01:46 She was a great woman and an advocate for women's reproductive rights, for women's leadership.
01:52 But at the same time, she was all about work.
01:54 She was always thinking about what to do next.
01:57 She did her homework.
01:58 And I'm thinking about an interview that we did.
02:02 We played a little bit of earlier from February of 2012, where I was asking her about the
02:07 controversy because the assault ban had, you know, sun setting.
02:11 It was 1994.
02:12 So it was already a big issue trying to get the assault ban back in place or to keep it.
02:21 And she talked about the fact that with for her, it was a passion and getting that assault
02:29 ban in her freshman term as a senator and that Joe Biden, judiciary chairman at the
02:34 time, had said, well, you'll never get that done.
02:37 The gun lobby will kill you.
02:39 And that she said, we're going to get it done.
02:41 A lot of people have taken credit for that.
02:42 It was she who pushed that through.
02:44 Well, she came into the Senate in 1993.
02:48 This bill passed the Congress, signed by the president in 1994.
02:55 And so she did.
02:57 And again, because of the standing that she had, the experience that she had, she was
03:04 not taking no for an answer.
03:07 And I will tell you, because I was a lowly junior member working under the leadership
03:13 of Chuck Schumer at the time, who carried the mantle in the House.
03:17 And as he said beautifully on the floor, worked with Dianne Feinstein on this.
03:23 It was hard because it wasn't, shall we say, easy for members to vote for it coming from
03:30 certain districts.
03:32 But she gave them the path.
03:34 She gave them the goal and the path.
03:36 And working with the Brady's, everyone, we got it done.
03:41 But it would not have happened without Dianne Feinstein.
03:43 And no offense to Joe Biden or anyone else.
03:46 They were just telling her the facts of life.
03:48 This is going to be hard.
03:50 And we weren't even able to pass the rules right in the beginning.
03:53 And then we were.
03:54 Also, of course, the Senate Intelligence Committee.
03:57 She's the first woman intelligence chair.
04:00 You were a leader in the House on intelligence.
04:02 You know, meant to take on the CIA and the White House after 9/11.
04:09 We actually have something about that on the torture report when she was being pilloried
04:15 for this, for with John McCain in a bipartisan way, which is classic Feinstein, working on
04:22 trying to get that that report out and get it through the Senate and change the law.
04:28 Let's watch.
04:31 So you've just made it very clear that this all started under Jay Rockefeller when he
04:34 was chair of the committee.
04:37 He is a man not given to being emotional, I guess, as you as chair are.
04:42 I mean, where do we come down in this day and age where a woman who is chair of the
04:47 Intelligence Committee because of seniority and expertise and all the rest that goes into
04:52 that gets accused of being emotional in having worked on this report?
04:59 And that's basically the staff on this report.
05:03 I think that's an old male fallback position.
05:07 And there's no question that there are a lot of people out there.
05:11 I suspect one of them is former CIA Director Hayden that does not want the report to come
05:16 out.
05:17 So one of the things you do is try to blur the reputation of someone connected with the
05:23 report.
05:26 I suspect you've also heard people say, Nancy Pelosi, that you're being emotional when you
05:31 push for certain things that are hard to do.
05:33 I don't pay attention to that.
05:34 But let me just say about Diane in terms of this, because I was I had 30 years on the
05:41 Intelligence Committee, some of it at that time ex officio as as a speaker or leader,
05:47 depending on what was what the timing was.
05:51 But she did that.
05:52 She, Diane, left us the way she lived on her own terms.
05:57 She knew what she wanted to get accomplished.
06:01 She respected diversity of opinion.
06:03 She was as bipartisan as they come.
06:06 Respectful, but not departing from the position.
06:11 And she was not going to be bothered about anybody saying that she was emotional.
06:16 That's the other person's problem.
06:18 That's not her problem.
06:19 One of the moments that I recall also was at the end of the 2008 campaign.
06:25 She was defeated by Barack Obama.
06:27 It was a bitter primary season.
06:29 He's now elected.
06:30 He's the president elect.
06:32 And she invited Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to her home, really for a peace talk, because
06:38 the two camps, not the principals, but the two camps were very bitter after that campaign.
06:44 And there were people resisting any offer for her to join the Cabinet.
06:48 And then she left the two of them together.
06:50 And my reporting from this is that that was the beginning of the possibility that she
06:57 would accept an offer to join the Cabinet and become a secretary of state.
07:00 You probably have better insights than I.
07:02 Well, I don't, because I don't know the particulars.
07:07 But I do know that Diane believes in bringing people together.
07:12 Let's share our thoughts, our values, our challenges.
07:16 And she always did believe that what we had in common was more than what we were disagreeing
07:23 on.
07:24 So that gave her hope, confidence about doing something like that.
07:28 And she's Diane Feinstein.
07:30 She had the heft, politically speaking, that they would accept her invitation, that they
07:40 would accept her invitation with the prospect that such a conversation would take place.
07:47 But she believed in herself.
07:49 She believed in she was about goodness.
07:52 She was about greatness.
07:53 She was about love.
07:55 She was about power and using it.
07:57 She was about strength.
07:59 I just want to make sure everybody knows that this giant of a person, this trailblazer,
08:04 this icon, this champion, this hero, walked among us.
08:08 And we all benefited from it.
08:10 More importantly, the American people did.
08:12 And in San Francisco, we just look forward to welcoming her back home.
08:17 Of course, she's always back and forth, but home to rest so that she can rest in peace.
08:24 Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita, thank you very much.
08:27 It's a tough day for you.
08:29 And thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
08:31 I appreciate that.
08:32 And thank you for your attention to Diane.
08:35 Absolutely.
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