House Speaker Nancy Pelosi feels "liberated," as she put it at her Thursday press conference with reporters. "I feel very liberated," she said, repeating the sentiment twice. "I feel that I've extended every possible courtesy. I've shown every level of respect," she said of Trump. It sounded as if she might add "but now..." and then pivot to a glimpse of the new road ahead. She did not tip her hand. The path Pelosi is plotting is something that will unfold over time.

But for the moment, Pelosi ain't apologizing for nothing, despite taking some heat over performing a very public shredding of Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night. Asked if she had trampled on her consistent message of championing a certain dignity in our politics, Pelosi responded without missing a beat, "No, I did not. I tore up a manifesto of mistruths."

She reminded the press corps how hard it is to get them focused on reporting about the actual issues and policies House Democrats are working on, including an infrastructure bill and a bill they passed to lower drug prices (H.R. 3) that's currently dying a slow death on Mitch McConnell's desk. Meanwhile, Trump used his address as an opportunity to spew complete nonsense about Republicans supposedly protecting people's preexisting condition coverage when in fact they are working to dismantle it.

"He misrepresented all of that," she said. "It was very necessary to get the attention of the American people to say, this is not true and this is how it affects you," she said of her public display, adding, "And I don't need any lessons from anybody, especially the president of the United States, about dignity. Is it okay to start saying 'four more years' in the House of Representatives? It's just unheard of."

Pelosi later explained that her unexpected shredding was premeditated and had nothing to do with the fact that Trump hadn't shaken her hand at the beginning of the speech. "That meant nothing to me," she said. Instead, she had quickly scanned the speech and realized it was riddled with lies.

"When I saw the compilation of falsehoods," she explained, "I started to think there has to be something that clearly indicates to the American people that this is not the truth." In other words, far from a fit of pique, it was a little bit of theater by Pelosi, who was very much in control of the message she hoped to relay to the public. 

She also skewered the crux of Trump's speech, saying he hadn't told the nation anything about where he planned to lead the nation. "That was not a State of the Union, that was his 'state of his mind' address" she explained. "We want a state of the Union—where are we, where are we going, and the rest."

Pelosi emphatically declared that the nation must vote Trump out. "Next year we will have a new president of the United States. That is an absolute imperative for our country," she noted.

Taken together, Pelosi's remarks reveal how offended she was that Trump coopted The People's House to stage a campaign rally filled with lies, chants, and completely devoid of a vision for the country. "Do it in your own office," she quipped. "We don't come in your office and do congressional business."

Pelosi has always been a measured and calculated politician, but she appears to be entering a new gloves-off phase of her speakership. Her final words before leaving the podium were unequivocal: "He has shredded the truth in his speech. He's shredding the Constitution in his conduct. I shredded the state of his mind address."

Just guessing there’s more shredding to come from Pelosi.