Nancy Mace Doesn’t Need Trump, She’s Got Her Trader Joe’s Wine And Her Dignity.
Well, we’re certain she has the Trader Joe’s wine.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace is desperate to keep the seat she narrowly won in 2020, but that’s increasingly unlikely because Donald Trump has decided to flush her political career down the toilet along with any classified documents that are handy. (You know, allegedly. ) When Trump endorsed her primary opponent Katie Arrington, she flew to New York and stood outside Trump Tower to talk about how awesome he is. She all but held up a boombox that played “In Your Eyes.” Trump doesn’t even live in New York anymore, but maybe it's illegal to stand outside Mar-a-Lago.
REMEMBER?: What's Your Most Embarrassing Moment? Here's Nancy Mace's!
The Trump-begging video she filmed on a busy New York street was so pathetic we’ll probably include it every story about her for the foreseeable future.
I’m standing in front of Trump Tower with a message this morning… #SC01 #LowcountryFirstpic.twitter.com/CpmMYA63qt
— Nancy Mace (@Nancy Mace) 1644510098
The groveling didn’t work, so Mace has humiliated herself further in an interview with her hometown paper, The State . The feature also includes the video where Mace debased herself for Trump’s approval, because that’s the sort of thing that follows you around forever.
Tonight Nancy Mace is not on TV.
The South Carolina congresswoman is back home, sitting on the gray plush sectional in her living room, sipping Trader Joe’s sparkling red wine from a simple stemless glass. Her long brown hair, which normally cascades down her back, is instead pulled up into a high, messy bun.
Tonight she must reckon with her new political reality.
Mace took another sip of wine.
“I’m gonna win without him,” Mace said.
A recent poll of GOP voters has Mace up double digits over Arrington. That’s good news! But it doesn’t seem like she believes it. You’d think she’d be kickboxing or punching heavy bags, maybe breaking wooden planks with her bare foot. Instead, she seems miserable. The Trader Joe’s wine is sparkling but doesn’t feel celebratory.
REMEMBER?: GOP Rep. Nancy Mace Never Gets Credit She Deserves For Being Complete A-Hole
Trump didn’t just endorse Arrington, who primaried and defeated Mark Sanford in 2018 before losing the general to Democrat Joe Cunningham. He outright trashed Mace, calling her “an absolutely terrible candidate” and “disloyal.” When Byrd asks Mace what soured Trump on her, she reportedly scoffs. “I don’t know .. You’ll need to ask him.”
South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District deserves a representative with a basic grasp of cause and effect. It’s clear what happened: Mace was the only Republican House member from South Carolina who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. ( The State considers not overturning a presidential election part of a “bold vision for a post-Trump GOP," apparently.)
Mace told The Statethat after the January 6 insurrection that she no longer believed in Trump. She declared on CNN that the Capitol attack erased Trump’s entire legacy and told Fox News she didn’t think he had a future in the GOP. She also signed a letter with GOP Reps. Chip Roy, Dan Crenshaw, and John Curtis condemning Trump for his “words and actions” that contributed to the attack.
REMEMBER?: Marjorie Taylor Greene Know Your But What Am I, Nancy Mace!
Mace didn’t vote to impeach Trump -- insulting Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory in the process -- and refused to support an investigation into the attack she’d already acknowledged was Trump’s fault. She also sided with the MAGA mob to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position. But she’s no Trump toady!
She also resents when people (like me, just a few paragraphs ago) describe her Trump Tower video as “groveling.”
“If you call it groveling, I would say you didn’t watch the video,” Mace said. “I think it’s important to know what I said, but also what I didn’t say — present tense versus past tense.”
That must be the Chateau Trader Joe’s Rothschild talking. There’s no room in MAGA for the white suburban soft shoe of “I don’t like Trump’s tweets but I like his policies.” She should’ve realized that when she helped banish Cheney. You’re either a full-on Trump disciple like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene or you’re toast.
Former GOP South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has endorsed Mace’s re-election, but considering how it seems like Haley is never more than a few weeks away from a North Korean-style video outside Trump Tower, she’s not likely to directly challenge Trump. That’s a problem because Arrington and Trump are making this primary all about absolute loyalty to the insurrectionist-in-chief.
“[Mace] sold out President Trump. She sold out this district. She sold me out. I voted for her,” Arrington said. “And I sent her to Washington because she was going to be a pro-Trump conservative, because that’s what we need.”
The MAGA movement is objectively worse and more dangerous than it was in 2020. If Mace had stood up against Trump in 2016, doing everything possible to block his victory, she might’ve still wound up in Congress, and she’d have a future in a non-Trump GOP. Now it’s too late. She waited until fifteen minutes before sunset to go kill Dracula. That rarely ends well.
OPEN THREAD.
[ The State ]
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like a D-I-V-A.
Aww, maybe he’ll warm up over time.
Otherwise, just periodically check under the furniture.