Speaking in Normandy, where she’s leading a congressional delegation marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear that she wouldn’t fight Donald Trump on the beaches. “I don’t talk about the president while I’m out of the country. That’s my principle,” she told reporters. (Trump, unsurprisingly, has no such code. He referred to Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy” and called her a “disaster” in an interview with Fox News shortly before a ceremony commemorating the Allied invasion.)

And, it appears Pelosi won’t be fighting Trump in Congress, either. Despite growing pressure from her caucus—now including members of party leadership, most notably Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler—Pelosi once again parried demands that House Democrats move forward with impeachment proceedings. “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,” she said.



It’s a subtler argument than it seems. Pelosi is saying that what she wants, above all, is accountability. The House could impeach the president, but the Senate would ultimately acquit him. It’s better, in this formulation, to focus the Democratic Party’s energy on winning in 2020—kicking the president out of office and into the hands of federal prosecutors. Yes, that’s a harsher stance than her previous statements—“Lock him up” is certainly an escalation from “He’s just not worth it”—but that likely just reflects the sheer number of House Democrats who have come out in favor of impeachment following the Mueller report (now at sixty, and counting).



Perhaps more importantly, Pelosi’s words follow the Trump administration’s obstinate refusal to give an inch on the numerous investigations Congress is attempting to conduct. When Democrats reclaimed the House, most agreed on Pelosi’s strategy: Investigate first, impeach later—provided, of course, the investigations produce impeachable offenses. Now, however, it is becoming ever more clear that impeachment might be the only way to effectively investigate an administration that refuses to cooperate.



Pelosi is one of a dwindling number of Democrats who refuses to acknowledge this reality. But her line of reasoning doesn’t track—particularly now that she has stated that Trump should be jailed.