President Donald Trump’s resounding victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris likely signals the beginning of the end of the influence of aged leaders like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi, “who for decades reigned as kingmaker in her party, facing the prospect of having her status as a power player in the party unceremoniously stripped away on the back of” Harris’ defeat.
The shocking decline occurs just months after her key involvement in efforts to push President Joe Biden out of the race.
As the blame game intensifies in the wake of Harris’s defeat, Pelosi finds herself at the center of the accusations.
“The influences of a [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer or a Pelosi or a movie star or an Obama deciding to anoint somebody—those guys are gone,” business investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary said this week.
“In four years, they won’t have that kind of influence,” he added in a thinly veiled reference to actor George Clooney, who famously and publicly called on Biden to end his reelection following a disastrous debate with Trump.
Some Republicans are directly attributing the significant Democratic losses—from the top of the ticket to the Senate flipping red and the House still in contention—specifically to Pelosi.
“You’ve got to blame Nancy Pelosi,” former GOP House Speaker and fellow Californian Kevin McCarthy said during a Fox News interview this week.