House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s youngest daughter Alexandra opened up about how the recent attack against her father Paul affected her family in an interview on The View on Thursday, December 15. The documentary filmmaker, 52, said that in the aftermath of her dad being attacked by a home invader, many members of the Pelosi family have been struggling to rest. “What happened to my father was tragic, and just terrible, and for us traumatizing still to this day—many people in my family can’t sleep through the night still,” she said.
Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi, shares an update on her father after he was violently attacked in his home in October: "It's day by day. It's a very long recovery."
"It's been very dark in our family." https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/0FMls5eloh
— The View (@TheView) December 15, 2022
Alexandra, who was on the show to promote her new documentary about her mom Pelosi In The House, was answering a question about the role that social media plays in stoking division and how it had played a part in the defendant’s motivations to try to attack her mom (as well as Hunter Biden, Tom Hanks, and Gavin Newsom). “I think social media is destroying the fabric of this country,” she said. “The defendant mentioned the president’s name, by name. This is the stuff that unwell people get from social media.”
She expanded by speaking about the “toxic” posts that go “unchecked” on social media and said that sometimes the horrible things that people say on the internet can be just as difficult as the terrifying attack. “If you go to Twitter, the kinds of things that they’re saying, and that’s what hurts more than your scalp surgery,” Alexandra said.
When speaking about her dad was doing, Alexandra explained that even though it was “a very dark time” for the family, he had gone to an event on Wednesday, and they were taking their time as he gets better. “It’s day-by-day. It’s a very long recovery,” she said.
Besides the impact of social media, the filmmaker also spoke about how when her mom first ran for Congress, she’d asked for permission, but her after her dad’s attack, she said that she may have thought differently. “We’re sitting in the ICU, and I said to her, ‘If I had known that this was where it was going to end, I never would’ve given you my permission,” she said, before revealing what her dad said. “My father was the one who said, ‘That’s not fair. You have to say if you came to me in this toxic social media environment.’”
Alexandra’s interview came almost two weeks after her dad made his first public appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier in December. The interview also came the day after police footage of the attack was shown in court in the trial for the suspect. Paul was hospitalized following the October 28 attack and was released on November 3. Following the attack, the House Speaker released a statement, speaking about how the family was “heartbroken” by the incident.