In her first televised interview since her husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked with a hammer at their San Francisco home, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledged that the traumatic event will affect her decisions about her political future.

When asked whether she might retire if Democrats lose the House majority, Pelosi told Anderson Cooper in an interview that aired on CNN on Monday night that her “decision will be affected [by] what happened the last week or two.”

The eighty-two-year-old Pelosi, who has been the top House Democrat for two decades, also revealed during the interview how she received the news that her husband had been attacked. She said that she had been asleep in Washington, DC, after getting in the night before from San Francisco when her doorbell rang early in the morning.

“I look up, I see it’s 5 [a.m. ET], [the Capitol Police] must be at the wrong apartment,” Pelosi said, adding that they rang the doorbell again and then she heard “bang, bang, bang, bang, bang on the door.”

“So, I run to the door, and I’m very scared,” she continued. “I see the Capitol Police and they say, ‘We have to come in to talk to you.’”

Pelosi admitted that her thoughts went immediately to her children and grandchildren.

“And I’m thinking my children, my grandchildren. I never thought it would be Paul because, you know, I knew he wouldn’t be out and about, shall we say. And so they came in,” she said. “At that time, we didn’t even know where he was.”

The Democratic lawmaker also reflected on the fact that she likely was the intended target of the attack.

“For me this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target and he’s the one who is paying the price,” she said. “He was not looking for Paul, he was looking for me.”

Pelosi took issue with how some Republicans have reacted to the brutal attack.

“You see what the reaction is on the other side to this, to make a joke of it, and really that is traumatizing, too. In our democracy there is one party that is doubting the outcome of the election, feeding that flame, and mocking any violence that happens. That has to stop,” she said.

“I do think there has to be some message to the Republicans to stop the disinformation. That is without any question a source of what happened on January 6 [attack on the U.S. Capitol], and the denial of that, and then a source of what’s happening to me now,” she continued.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Finance and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.