Republican Rep. Nancy Mace seems to have changed her bet on which side will win the civil war in her party. After getting into office as a hardcore Trumpster—she worked for his campaign in 2016—Mace made headlines for voting to certify the electoral votes and for speaking out about the attack on the U.S. Capitol. She told reporters she had barricaded herself in her office during the attack, and slept there because she feared being attacked by Trump supporters staying in her hotel.
A month later, Mace is making headlines for attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Ocasio-Cortez’s description of her own fear during the attack.
“I'm two doors down from @aoc and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway ...” Mace tweeted over a Fox News headline about herself attacking Ocasio-Cortez on this issue—not the only Fox News headline aggressively trying to discredit Ocasio-Cortez.
Okay … so the first thing is, Ocasio-Cortez did not say that insurrectionists stormed their hallway. Don’t believe me? You can check the video—around 42 minutes in. Or you can believe CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, who explains: “Ocasio-Cortez didn’t say insurrectionists were in their hallway. She said she was generally scared about what was going on and specifically scared by a Capitol police officer who seemed angry and hadn’t made clear he was with law enforcement.”
That Dale fact check comes in response to Mace not letting this one go. After AOC called Mace’s “two doors down” attack “deeply cynical & disgusting,” Mace came back with “*FACT CHECK* I have not once discounted your fear. We were ALL terrified that day. I’m stating the fact that insurrectionists were never in our hallway... because they weren’t. I deal in facts. Unlike you, apparently.”
Again, Ocasio-Cortez did not say insurrectionists were in the hallway. She was completely explicit about what did and didn’t happen, her reasons for fear, and who showed up at her office. Mace is repeatedly refusing to deal in the facts of what Ocasio-Cortez said happened.
Mace, interestingly enough, has told multiple versions of her story. On Jan. 7, her home state newspaper, The State, offered the “Mace said she barricaded herself inside her D.C. office during the attack. Fearing that Trump supporters she had seen staying at her hotel might target her after she voted to certify the electoral votes, Mace said she decided to sleep in her office that night” version.
But here’s Mace at 1:44 PM on Jan. 6:
If AOC’s account is supposed to be somehow suspicious because she said she was scared when a police officer entered her office without identifying himself as police while the Capitol was under attack, then how are we to read Mace having said on Jan. 6, early in the attack, that she had “Just evacuated my office,” only to tell reporters that she had barricaded herself in her office?
We can be generous here: It was a long, scary day. Things got confusing. Mace may have barricaded herself in her office at one point and evacuated it at another.
Or we can follow Mace’s own example and accuse her of dishonesty. In fact, it’s a lot more reasonable to accuse Mace of dishonesty—Mace has had to lie about what AOC said in order to attack her, whereas Mace really did say two different things, and we can question Mace’s honesty based on her lie about Ocasio-Cortez. We know she’s lying. The only question is about how many things.
Mace clearly assumed on Jan. 6 and 7 that her party was going to turn against the insurrectionists, and she wanted to be on board with the winning side. In pursuit of that, she was outspokenly horrified about the attack on the Capitol and what it meant for the Republican Party. But once she saw that wasn’t the winning side, she enthusiastically flipped over to attacking Ocasio-Cortez. Just as the Republican Party has in recent weeks shown us without question what it is and who its leaders are, Nancy Mace is showing us who she is. Believe what she’s showing us, not what she’s telling us.