President Donald Trump has reportedly slammed Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) by wishing her luck and asserting that “she’s going to need it.”
A report by One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec stated that a staffer had asked Trump about Mace. Trump responded by wishing her “best of luck” and pointing out that “she’s going to need it”.
SCOOP: A staffer asked President Trump about Nancy Mace earlier this afternoon. He shrugged and said, "Best of luck. She's going to need it."
— Jack Posobiec
(@JackPosobiec) January 18, 2021
Rep. Mace is a newly elected freshman Congresswoman who has come out as one of the most vocal critics of Trump in the party, despite being an early Trump 2016 campaign staffer and running on her record as a Trump loyalist during her congressional campaign.
Mace has blamed the January 6 Capitol riots on President Trump, despite the fact Trump urged his supporters to protest peacefully. She subsequently called for the President to be formally censured by Congress.
“With censure, that was one of the things that I believe we should have had up for debate,” she told NBC’s Meet The Press in an interview.
“It’s complex, constitutionally, but there were folks in both chambers and in both parties having the ability to look at that as an option, but we couldn’t even bring it up for debate or look at that as an option because we were really trying hard to figure out how do we hold a president accountable that put all of our lives at risk?”
She has also blamed members of Congress for the riot, calling for rival Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to be investigated for tweeting during the riot. She has called on members of Congress who objected to the certification of the electoral college to be defunded.
“You’re seeing corporations and companies say ‘not one more dime to those that objected, we’re going to do the right thing’,” she said during the same interview.
Given Mace’s speedy abandonment of the President, she is seen as extremely vulnerable to a primary challenge. South Carolina’s 1st district, which she represents, has a Cook PVI of R+10, indicating that this is a strongly Republican district. Her Republican predecessor, Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), another vocal anti-Trumper, lost a primary challenge there in 2018 to nominally pro-Trump state Rep. Katie Arrington.
It remains to be seen whether Arrington will run again, this time against Mace. Regardless, Mace’s actions have likely made a strong primary challenge an inevitability.