Rep. Mace defends switched support for Trump: ‘People want to get rid of Joe Biden’

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on Sunday defended her endorsement of former President Trump despite her past criticism of the GOP presidential candidate, arguing that the past three-and-a-half years under President Biden have left the country worse off.

“Well, after almost four years of Joe Biden, it wasn’t that difficult to watch and see ballots being cast across the country, seeing the overwhelming support that Donald Trump has within the party,” Mace said on NewsNation‘s “The Hill Sunday.”

NewsNation anchor Blake Burman noted the South Carolina Republican showed a switch in support for Trump since he lost the election in 2020 and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Shortly after the insurrection, Mace said the Republican Party needed to be “rebuilt” and that Trump’s “entire legacy was wiped out.”

When Burman suggested Mace could have endorsed someone else for the primary, she said, “We’ve had three-and-a-half years of Joe Biden now, and it’s pretty easy.”

“We’ve had two back-to-back presidencies, and we were all safer, we were more prosperous, wages were better, inflation was lower under Donald Trump,” she continued. “We didn’t have the endless wars that we have today that we’re seeing. Hamas wasn’t invading Israel, Russia was not invading Ukraine, the Houthis weren’t trying to bomb … U.S. military assets in the Middle East overseas. And so, we were all better off with Donald Trump as president, and that’s what we’re seeing today. People want to get rid of Joe Biden.”

Mace appeared to make peace with the insurrection and Trump’s role in the incident earlier this year, endorsing the former president’s reelection bid last January.

At the time of her endorsement, Mace noted she does not see “eye to eye perfectly with any candidate,” but the time arrived “to unite behind our nominee.

“To be honest, it’s been a complete s— show since he left the White House. Our country needs to reverse all the damage Joe Biden has done,” she said in a post on the social platform X in January.

NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.