Leave it up to Nancy Pelosi to try to extract some political advantage from a horrible freak assault on her husband.

According to Axios:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a new interview with CNN that the recent attack on her husband will impact her decision on whether to retire.

Why it matters: The attack of Paul Pelosi at the couple's San Francisco home in late October has increased alarm about Congress members' personal security amid a broader rise in threats against prominent political figures.

Yes, it was a terrible attack, and no, Paul Pelosi didn't provoke it, nor was it gay boyfriend stuff, or whatever the malevolent are cooking up as their conspiracy theory.

A bum of no coherent beliefs, lots of drugs, zero contributions to society, and a deportation notice that should have been there with his name on it, yet wasn't, was walking around in our country unencumbered, and went to the Pelosi house in San Francisco with intent to do harm. He's been rightly arrested and now belongs in prison with a long sentence and a flight back to his homeland once he serves every day of it, which should include a lot of breaking rocks in the hot sun. End of story.

But Pelosi claims that the attack has changed everything, because presumably she loves her husband so much, she's now hinting that she plans to get out of politics. How very ... pious.

That might have worked a few years ago. But not now.

After all, if she really were as concerned for her husband's health as she says, she'd resign right now to be with him. Why hasn't she?

Everyone knows she's planning to retire. She said she would in 2018, she had her four years of fun destroying the economy while showing us the pricey ice cream contents of her refrigerator. Now she's poised to lose power as the most powerful person in Congress in the wake of today's midterms. Once the bloodbath happens, she'll be the opposition, harping from the sidelines, no longer the lady godfather with countless characters coming to pay tribute to her, and that's not Nancy's style. Of course she wants to get the heck out of Dodge. A lot of them on the losing side do.

She's already spoke of moving to Italy, kind of the way Latin dictators do after their stretch in power is done -- fleeing to the luxe life of Europe, and perhaps becoming the Biden administration's ambassador to Italy. That would be a heckuva palmy life for the Pelosis, with lots of limos, a multi-storey wine cellar, and security galore at taxpayer expense.

But Italy's kind of an important ally right now, and has just elected the most conservative prime minister in its post-Renaissance history as a republic. Nancy Pelosi is a left-wing extremist. You can bet that relations wouldn't strengthen if Pelosi were to become Joe Biden's ambassador to Italy, if that would be the aim. Putting Nancy there would be more in line with Joe wanting to 'teach' the new prime minister some kind of lesson and then watch relations from there go downhill.

 Her new claim that the attack on her husband might just make her change plans makes one wonder -- change them to what?

Most likely, she's doing this in a bid to win sympathy, and reap just a little more hay blaming Republicans for the attack. That's pure politics. If that's correct, then Pelosi would use an attack on her husband to win something for herself, to not let a crisis go to waste. If so, how cynical.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0, edited with Adobe PhotoShop Elements.