'Grotesque word': Nancy Pelosi fears terrible consequences if she utters Trump's name

Nancy Pelosi revealed that she hasn't spoken to Joe Biden since urging him to drop out of the presidential race, and she disclosed that she won't even say Donald Trump's name aloud because she considers it a "grotesque word."

The former House speaker told The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland on the Politics Weekly America podcast that she believed a cold political calculation was necessary after seeing the president's frail performance in a June debate against the former president, and she said that outweighed her fondness for Biden as a friend and longtime ally.

“I have the greatest respect for him," Pelosi said. "I think he’s one of the great consequential presidents of our country. I think his legacy had to be protected. I didn’t see that happening in the course that it was on, the election was on. My call was just to: ‘Let’s get on a better course.’ He will make the decision as to what that is, and he made that decision. But I think he has some unease because we’ve been friends for decades."

“Elections are decisions,” she added. “You decide to win. I decided a while ago that Donald Trump will never set foot in the White House again as president of the United States or in any other capacity."

Pelosi encouraged the Democratic Party to endorse Kamala Harris as the nominee, and she told the interviewer that she rarely spoke the former president's name.

“I hardly ever say his name,” she said, instead describing him as “what’s-his-name”.

“I think [Trump is] a grotesque word," Pelosi continued. "You just don’t like the word passing your lips. I just don’t. I’m afraid, you know, when I grew up Catholic, as I am now, if you said a bad word, you could burn in hell if you didn’t have a chance to confess. So I don’t want to take any chances.

“It’s up there with, like, swearing," she added.

Pelosi agreed with former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley that Trump was "fascist to the core," pointing to jokes he and other Republicans made about a brutal hammer attack on her own husband Paul Pelosi in their home by a conspiracy theorist.

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“This is springing from the top,” she said of his role in provoking political violence. “He’s taking pride in doing it. Don’t take it from me, take it from him.”

The California Democrat fears a possible repeat of the Jan. 6 insurrection if Trump loses again, and she said that it was crucial for Democrats to retake the House majority for that reason.

"Hakeem Jeffries must have the gavel, which means that we have the majority of the votes to accept the results of the electoral college for the peaceful transfer of power," she said. ‘“Nobody could have ever seen an insurrection incited by the president of the United States. But an outsider, as a loser in this election, once again, he might try that.”

Pelosi uttered Trump's name later in the interview but quickly caught herself.

“I said his name – oh my gosh," Pelosi said. "I hope I don’t burn in hell.”