Donald Trump on Monday delivered a yet another full-throated endorsement of Rep, Nancy Mace (R-SC) even as a report from Slate reveals she privately mocked supporters of the former president as “not smart."
“It is my great honor to Endorse a Strong Conservative Voice for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the eve of South Carolina's state primary elections. Trump also insisted Mace “has [his] complete and total endorsement.”
Trump’s post comes on the heels of a Slate report that claims Mace lashed out against Trump voters after the fallout form her ill-received “scarlet letter” stunt last October.
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Mace last year affixed the a red “A” on her shirt in the aftermath of her vote to join seven other Republican congressmen in ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.
According to Slate, Mace’s decision to emulate the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic novel “The Scarlet Letter” baffled some members of her staff.
“I thought it was just some fashion statement,” one staffer recalled. “I was like, OK, well, maybe this is an Abercrombie shirt or something.” Only after seeing Mace on camera at a meeting of House Republicans—swarmed by reporters—did the staffer put it together: The scarlet-letter outfit “was another attempt by her to be a part of the story.” Or, as a second staffer remembered, it was an attempt to become the star of the story: “She wanted every single person to think—when they thought of the McCarthy ouster vote, not to think of the eight, but to think of Nancy Mace,” the staffer said.
Mace at the time told reporters she was wearing the scarlet letter as “a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice.”
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“I will do the right thing every single time, no matter the consequences,” Mace said.
But, as the fallout from her decision to wear a scarlet “A” on her outfit grew, Mace, Slate reports, “griped to her staff that those who didn’t get it weren’t smart — they were probably ‘Trump voters,’ she said.”
According to the report, Trump voters aren't the only people to draw Mace’s ire. “A former senior staffer said Mace used to trash members like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and [Matt] Gaetz for being in the Capitol just to make noise,” Slate reporter Jim Newell reports.
Read Slate’s full report here.
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