In her new book, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) revealed why she shredded a copy of former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech four years ago. 

As Trump wrapped up his nationally televised address to Congress in 2020, Pelosi stood directly behind him. The Democratic speaker captured the attention of millions when she ripped her copy of the GOP leader’s speech while he stood at the podium, acknowledging applause. 

Pelosi, then the lower chamber’s most powerful Democrat, said she shredded the speech because she was disgusted by Trump’s “lies.”

“I had intended to mark each page of the speech that contained a lie with a little tear in the paper so I could go back and easily find the pages,” she wrote in The Art of Power. “But as Trump continued speaking, it was not just one, two, three, or four pages with lies.”

“It was pages and pages of them,” the former House speaker continued. “At the close of the speech, disgusted with what I heard, I ripped the pages from end to end.”

During the four years the two worked together during Trump’s presidency, Pelosi fostered a contentious relationship with the Republican leader. After bitter fights over government funding and border security, Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry into Trump in September 2019. Democrats alleged that Trump abused his presidential powers to seek assistance from a foreign government to help his bid for reelection.

Trump called the impeachment inquiry a “fantasy” and an “illegal, partisan, attempted coup” in a letter to Pelosi that December. 

“You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy,” Trump wrote. “You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.”

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Less than two months later, Pelosi took their deteriorated relationship public as she tore his State of the Union speech in front of the whole nation.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with this man, and at the end of nearly all of them, I think, ‘Either you are stupid, or you think that the rest of us are,’” the speaker emerita reflected in her book.