Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), one of the eight Republicans responsible for ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, claimed with a straight face on Wednesday that Democrats in Congress “trust” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
CNN anchor Jake Tapper, meanwhile, wasn’t buying what she was selling.
Three days after she officially threw her support behind Jordan for the speaker’s race, and hours after the GOP caucus narrowly backed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) to succeed McCarthy, the attention-seeking congresswoman doubled down on her Jordan endorsement.
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Suggesting that she opposed Scalise because she had “grave concerns as a woman in balancing the protecting of life and protecting women’s rights,” despite Jordan’s own extreme anti-abortion stance, Mace then asserted that the lawmaker described as “Fox News’ man in Congress” was a unifier.
“We have a very divided world right now. I see what’s happening in Israel. We want someone—I want someone who will be a leader and bring our country together,” she declared.
Mace also insisted that she couldn’t “in good conscience vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” referencing a 2002 speech Scalise made before an extremist group founded by Duke.
“Do you think Jim Jordan is the guy to keep the country together?” Tapper wondered, adding that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) called Jordan “one of the main plotters” of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Is he really the unity candidate you are suggesting?” Tapper added.
The CNN anchor later pressed the South Carolina lawmaker on allegations that Jordan turned a blind eye to sexual abuse when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, accusations that Mace claimed she was “not familiar or aware of” this past weekend.
“This is something that should have been adjudicated in a court of law,” she responded. “I don’t know that it has been. Again, we can’t make decisions based on rumors, but we should make them based on facts.”
Toward the end of the interview, Tapper then asked if there was a “consensus” candidate Republicans could get behind if voting goes multiple rounds without a speaker being chosen.
“Well, I think Jim Jordan is not out of the mix. I talked to a lot of people who still support him. I’ve actually talked to Democrats who trust him at his word,” Mace contended, prompting an incredulous Tapper to cut her off.
“I talked to Democrats over the last week on who do they trust. Even though they don’t agree with him on many issues–,” the ethics-challenged congresswoman insisted, leading the CNN anchor to interject once again.
“The Jim Jordan from Ohio? Democrats from Congress?” Tapper pressed. “Name one Democrat from Congress that trusts Jim Jordan?”
Mace refused, claiming she was “not going to name people off the record” before insisting that “they trust him more than the former speaker” in her private conversations with Democrats.
“Ok, I’m not sure I’m buying the thing about Democrats trusting Jim Jordan,” Tapper pushed back.
“I’m not saying they’re going to vote for him,” she retorted. “I’m saying they trust him more than they trust the former speaker.”
A smirking Tapper, meanwhile, concluded by snarking, “that’s not really a high bar.”
