Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (SC), who claims to still support the policies of former President Donald Trump while in a heated primary battle, trashed him during a text message exchange with a former supporter following last year’s January 6 riot.
In the messages obtained by Breitbart News, Mace said she “will never forgive” the former president following the January 6 riot while also claiming that her “life was threatened because of the words and actions of the President.”
“My life was threatened because of the words and actions of the President. Words have consequences,” Mace texted a former supporter, who leaked the messages to Breitbart News. “I cannot explain or excuse the violent attack on our Capitol… I had to walk through a crime scene to vote last night,” Mace continued.
“Unacceptable. Indefensible,” she added, while blaming some of her fellow Republican lawmakers for the events that happened in January 2021, the text messages revealed.
She wrote that the riot occurred “because of the rhetoric [Trump] and some of my Republican colleagues were using in the days leading up to this event.”
However, what the congresswoman conveyed in her private conversations differ from the public remarks she made at the time — which never went as far as the language used in the text messages.
The congresswoman, who was backed by Trump in 2020 when she successfully unseated Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), publicly turned on the former president days after the riot.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s Meet the Press, she used the line about walking through a crime scene to vote and how it was “enormously disappointing” to see her party’s leadership and almost 150 of her Republican colleagues vote to still not certify the election, as a freshman member.
Her public remarks drew the ire of Trump, who called her a “sellout,” in the days after.
Despite all of this, in February 2022, Mace seemed to pull a 180 as she traveled to New York City to stand outside Trump Tower on Fifth Ave to record a campaign video about her support for the former president — the same person she claimed “threatened her life” a year earlier, and whom she said she would “never forgive.”
Trump threw his support behind Mace’s primary challenger, Katie Arrington, in the wake of her comments and as many Republicans in her district turned on her.
And in April 2022, amid a heated primary battle, Trump-backed Arrington called out Mace for being a hypocrite for trying to tout the former president’s border and vaccine policies in a campaign ad looking to score points with his base before the primary.
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In response to the ad, Arrington campaign spokesman Chris D’Anna thanked the congresswoman for emphasizing her hypocrisy in a statement to Breitbart News.
“Nancy Mace’s new ad goes to show just how much the D.C. swamp has control of her,” D’Anna said. “She must think voters are either stupid or have short memories because not long ago, she famously appeared on Fox and CNN on the same day, hours apart and wearing the same outfit, to spew two different answers on COVID vaccines.”
“Politicians are gonna ‘politician,’ but the voters of the low country know a self-serving sellout when they see one,” D’Anna added, pointing to last year when Mace also flip-flopped on live TV.
Breitbart News’ Politics Editor, Emma-Jo Morris contributed to this report.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.