While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren fought together to try and stop President Obama's fast-track trade authority, Pelosi said Wednesday that most in the Democratic Party do not align with Warren's view that the president has been too soft on Wall Street.
"There may have been a couple of people who say that, but that is not the consensus in our party," Pelosi told CNBC's John Harwood in a 45-minute interview published Wednesday. "The financial industry doesn't agree with that."
Pelosi's defense of the Obama administration came after she helped lead a Democratic House rebellion last month against Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Warren, one of the Democratic parties more progressive members, has also been a staunch opponent of that trade deal, and has generally remained one of the Obama administration's greatest critics in terms of most financial matters.
In early June, Warren wrote a scathing 13-page letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White regarding a number of issues, including special wavers that the SEC granted felon banks last month allowing them to continue doing business, CEO pay, stalling desperately needed SEC rules and regulations, and White's conflicts of interest regarding her former job and her husband's job as a top Wall Street lawyer, reported Business Insider.
Warren also recently went off on a top Treasury Department nominee over his extensive ties to the financial industry, eventually deriding his appointment, according to The Hill.
Pelosi said she didn't agree with those actions either, and cautioned that Warren's ideologies should not be applied to the entire Democratic Party.
"People will express themselves the way they do. That doesn't mean they speak for the whole party," she told CNBC, which noted that Pelosi's position is somewhat unsurprising since she "needs some Wall Street backing for her effort to recapture a Democratic Majority."
Wall Street has emerged as one of the biggest topics within the Democratic Party, especially with the upcoming election. Liberal members like Warren are pushing for a tougher stance on a banking industry that they say has been over-accommodated by both parties.
Another lawmaker seen by some on the left as too close to Wall Street is Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who has been criticized heavily by two liberal challengers for the nomination: former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Speaking of Clinton, Pelosi noted the strengths she could bring to the 2016 Democratic ticket: "That Hillary Clinton happens to be a woman is a wonderful thing. But I, yes, have confidence that she will be one of the most qualified people to go into the Oval Office in a long time."
