So is this for real? Or just another politician glomming onto a safe pop cultural reference to appear more, well, human?

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We did some digging, and it looks as if Pelosi’s U2 fandom has been hard-won. She may very well have been to more of the band’s concerts than any of her colleagues on the Hill and certainly any other septuagenarian who isn’t a professional groupie. Whenever the band stops in the DMV, you’re almost guaranteed to have a Pelosi moment (sometimes two nights in a row) with sightings and shout-outs going as far back as 2006.

More recently, in 2017, she got some love from the stage during U2′s show at FedEx Field. Bono, the band’s frontman, high-fived Pelosi for “resisting and persisting” before launching into “Ultra Violet.”

Bono, who frequently lobbies on behalf of his anti-poverty campaign, also consistently drops into Pelosi’s offices on the Hill if he’s in town for his other gig.

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In 2014, Pelosi congratulated her “dear friend” Bono on his Golden Globe win for best original song for “Ordinary Love,” which was featured in the biopic “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” and called the track “an extraordinary tribute to Mandela.” Just two years earlier at a celebration of Pelosi’s quarter of a century in the House, the U2 rocker praised the Californian congresswoman: “No one has fought harder than Nancy Pelosi since the day she came into office 25 years ago. Millions of people all over the world owe their lives to Nancy and the bipartisan coalition that fought to contain the AIDS epidemic.”