Pelosi cited Kennedy’s hard work in campaigning for many of the Democrats who won in 2018, flipping the majority and returning her to the job of speaker, but she also cited her own family’s close ties to the Kennedys, including her father’s role running the Maryland campaign for John F. Kennedy’s presidential bid in 1960.

“I became close to the Kennedy family from then on,” she said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post Live team, noting that she previously served in the House with Joe Kennedy’s father and his cousin, former congressman Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.).

Pelosi said that Markey’s campaign had crossed a hallowed line by running a negative campaign against the Kennedy dynasty.

“I wasn’t too happy with some of the assault that I saw made on the Kennedy family,” she told The Post’s opinion columnist Karen Tumulty, “and I thought, Joe didn’t ask me to endorse him, but I felt an imperative to do so.”