The Night The Women Roared: Pelosi, Clinton and Maddow Speak Out Against Sexism

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:45 pm

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It didn’t all happen last night, of course, but it was reported Thursday night. And so it is the night that women finally felt like someone out there gets it. From Clinton to Pelosi to Maddow, the women in politics are on fire right now.

Ashley Parker reporting in The Washington Post on the deal/not deal “Nancy and Chuck” made with Trump reported on Pelosi’s successful “Do women get to talk around here?”

At one point, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked, “What exactly does the president get out of this deal?” As Pelosi, the only woman at the table of 11, tried to make her point — that the president gets the cooperation of the Democrats, which he will likely need on a host of issues — the men in the room began talking over her and one another.

“Do the women get to talk around here?” Pelosi interjected, according to two people familiar with the exchange.

There was, at last, silence, and she was not interrupted again.

If only we could have a moment of silence during which only women could speak on this election fiasco.

Rebecca Shapiro of Huffington Post aptly titled her piece on this moment, “Nancy Pelosi Will Not Let The White House Mansplain To Her.”

After the election was stolen from the most qualified candidate in modern history, who also faced unprecedented sexism, the narrative that Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi needed to step down started.

You know, because Pelosi has accomplished so much. So definitely the Democrats need to replace her. ‘Thanks for Obamacare and keeping your caucus in line, Pelosi, but since the Russians and media gave the election to a Know-Nothing criminal reality TV show star, we’d like to really clean knowledge and competency totally out of government.’

Why anyone would speak over Nancy Pelosi, who knows more than most about actually successfully passing legislation than probably anyone else in that room, is indicative of one of the major problems we have right now: Misogyny granted king-like status, thanks to Trump.

No one got to mansplain to Hillary Clinton when she was on Rachel Maddow’s show, and so for once the vile sexism Hillary Clinton faced was discussed without apologies or someone who is not a woman talking over the only person who has any actual expertise on the subject.

“It was so rhetorically vile, what he said about so many women, and that kind of lifted the top off of what had been much more restrained,” 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Trump on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

Women have watched their country elevate to the highest office in the land a man who was caught on tape bragging about criminally assaulting them while women from different walks of life came forward to say Trump had assaulted them.

The country needs women like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow in the ring. They get things done, they’re exceptionally competent, and they’re not afraid to speak the truth.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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