 The former president of the United States on Trump, Elon Musk, others have spread stories casting doubt on what happened, fomenting conspiracy theories. What do you have to say to them? It's really sad for the country. It's really sad for the country that people of that high visibility would separate themselves from the facts and the truth in such a blatant way. It's really sad and it is traumatizing to those affected by it. They don't care about that, obviously. But it's destructive to the unity that we want to have in our country. But I don't have anything to say to them. I mean, we have nothing. There would be no common ground to have any conversation with them. You just watched Nancy Pelosi speak out publicly for the first time after her husband was attacked in their home. And as you saw, she addressed directly these conspiracy theories that were spread by individuals like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And for those of you who don't know what they said, let me give you a little bit of a refresher. Elon Musk, he tweeted in response to Hillary Clinton with an article claiming that Pelosi had gotten into a dispute with the attacker who happened to be a gay prostitute. There was zero evidence for this claim, mind you, but yet he still decided to share this publicly. Now, Trump didn't necessarily, to my knowledge, push the gay prostitute conspiracy theory, which was very prominent online. But he essentially implied that this event was staged. As MSNBC reports, the former president acknowledged the violence by complaining about crime rates in San Francisco and Chicago. Soon after the Republican did what he nearly always does, embracing a bonkers conspiracy theory and telling the public in reference to the alleged crime at the Pelosi household, the glass, it seems, was broken from the inside to the out. So it wasn't a break in, it was a breakout, complete nonsense. Now he later insulted Nancy Pelosi saying, I think she's an animal too to tell you the truth. Trump said at a rally near Dayton, Ohio on behalf of Republican candidates on the eve of the midterm elections before referring to Pelosi and the House impinging him twice. Now he said she's an animal too. So the question is, well, who was he comparing her to? Well, he was talking about MS13 gang members, one in particular who was the murderer. And he said that that guy's an animal and Nancy Pelosi is an animal too, because she impeached me twice. So if he was a responsible political leader, he would tone down the rhetoric. But just a couple of weeks after her husband was attacked in their home with her being the target, he's referring to her as an animal. So I thought that this story was so despicable, specifically because of how quickly the right decided to start conspiracy mongering about the attack. I mean, it wasn't even 24 hours, and they were already claiming that this was a dispute at a gay bar between Paul Pelosi and a gay prostitute. So we're to the point now where political violence is not only occurring, and not only is it justified, but the right will just lie about it in the event it doesn't suit their narrative in the event and makes them look bad. And that's really, really depressing to me because you can't have a functioning democracy under these circumstances. And to make matters worse, Nancy Pelosi, she's an individual who she's the speaker of the House, right? She's second in line for president after the VP, obviously. So she has a big security detail. So if this could happen to her, well, this could happen virtually to any member of Congress. And this is what she talks about here. And she blames the right for their bombastic and violent rhetoric. You have a large security detail. You have great protection around you. If this can happen to someone in your family, it can happen to any member of Congress's family. How does no amount of security is going to stop that? How does this stop? And how does this not happen again? Well, you would think that there would be some level of responsibility, but you see what the reaction is on the other side to this, to make a joke of it. And really, that is traumatizing, too. But nonetheless, forgetting them, there has to be some healing process. And Democrats and Republicans, you know, a member of Congress, anybody could be a target. There's no guarantee, but we can. In our democracy, there is one party that is doubting the outcome of the election, feeding that flame and mocking any violence that happens. That has to stop. Now, this particular segment stood out to me because I think about the ways in which members of the squad in particular are viciously attacked and targeted by individuals. Ilhan Omar faces constant death threats, as is the case with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And whoever the right chooses to make their target, death threats and hate and harassment follows as well. So things would improve in the events they toned down the rhetoric, but they're not doing that because the goal is for violence. The Republican Party has embraced violence. And this is a dangerous time in the United States of America. It's a dangerous time for democracy. It's a dangerous time for politicians. Now, Nancy Pelosi is correct that the right has embraced violence. A poll conducted at the end of last year by the University of Maryland and the Washington Post found that a third of Americans believe political violence is justified with 23% of Democrats, 41% of independents, and 40% of Republicans believing it's justified. Now, a CBS Suga poll found that a majority of Republicans believe that the Capitol insurrection was a defense of freedom and not a coup attempt. So we're in this situation where you can see a coup attempt storming the Capitol where people died and that's still not getting Republicans to rethink what they're doing, what they believe, who they look up to. If anything was going to change, it would have been after January 6th. They would have thought, okay, maybe this has gone too far, but they didn't do that and the conspiracy theories only continued to fester. So this is why I say we are in bad shape as a country. Now, because we're talking about Nancy Pelosi, I thought that it would be important to share an update on how her husband is doing because she explains that he was hit in the head with a hammer in two different areas and his skull was cracked, but it didn't penetrate the brain. So he is going to be able to make a full recovery at some point, but she's going to describe how he is completely and thoroughly traumatized and that's, you know, the same is true for her as well. She was the target of this attack, but let's watch. He's doing okay. He is, it's a long haul, but he knows he has to pace himself. He's such a gentleman that he's not complaining, but he's also knowing that it's a long haul. He's so concerned about the traumatic effect on our children and our grandchildren, and we're concerned about the traumatic effect on him, but again, he's on a good path with excellent care from San Francisco General and his healthcare providers. Has he been able to talk to you about what he was thinking when he woke up and found this person in the room? We haven't quite had that conversation because any revisiting of it is really traumatizing. It was hard and one of the hardest things all week was to go back into the house for him and the entrance, which is of course where he was hit, and of course upstairs in the bedroom where that person made his entrance, shall we say, but so we haven't, and the doctors have said, you know, any, we don't want him to watch the news. We don't want him to be revisiting a lot of this, at least not now, because it will add to the trauma, and the operation was a success, but it's only one part of the recovery, the traumatic, to a drastic head injury. It takes some time. Have you been able to listen to the 911 call? No. I haven't been able to listen to that or the body cam, any of that. No. I imagine when it is in the public domain is when I will have a chance to see it, but even then, the physician- Do you want to hear it? I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah. So this was very serious, and the severity of this attack, which was evident immediately after it happened when we didn't have all of the details, that didn't stop the right from lying about this. That didn't stop people with large platforms, with high visibility like Elon Musk from lying. That's not stopping individuals like Donald Trump who could be the next president after Biden from calling Nancy Pelosi an animal after somebody had planned to kidnap her and break her kneecaps. I mean, I feel like people don't truly understand how unstable our political system is going to become if this becomes more frequent, and it's already becoming more frequent, but political violence does not bode well for democracy. So this is one of those stories that was very demoralizing to me because it really was a reminder about where we're at as a country, and we're not in a good place. And that's not to say that things are going to get better after this election if Democrats win, because even if Democrats overperform the polls, there's still going to be a number of election deniers that will take power and continue to lie about our democracy. So we're in bad shape right now as a country. And this interview was really sad because it was a stark reminder of how bad things are and really how bad they are probably going to continue to get. So I'm sorry for the demerism, but I just wanted to share this because I think it's important.