As the incoming House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is an obvious choice for television news producers as a guest -- and she seems to know that's the best way to reach President Donald Trump.
According to a new Politico Magazine report, a former senior White House aide said the president is skeptical of information presented to him in person by advisers and allies.
So Trump is always looking for outside confirmation or guidance to determine what actions he should take -- and most often, that advice comes from people he sees on television.
John Bolton, now the national security adviser, has found his influence with the president weaker inside the White House than outside, when he was a frequent Fox News guest and urged Trump to leave the Iran nuclear deal, according to Politico Magazine.
Bolton was able to persuade Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year by publishing a column at The Hill website that then-White House aide Steve Bannon made sure the president saw.
That message was amplified by outside calls to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), which drowned out the unanimous advice from his national security team at the time -- including Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who have all left the administration.
Now that he's in McMaster's old job, Bolton found himself overruled by Trump in the president's decision to withdraw from Syria.
Pelosi seems to understand how that works.
“You know how I talk to him?” Pelosi told the New York Times Magazine shortly after the midterm elections. “I just say it in public. That’s what he hears: what people say in public.”
