Newly Elected Rep. Nancy Mace on Last Wednesday’s Violence

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): This past weekend was supposed to be a happy and historic time. I was sworn in South Carolina’s first ever Republican woman elected to Congress. I had my children up there in D.C. with me. I’m a single mom. It was a proud moment for me and my children. But, by Sunday night, I said: This doesn’t feel right. It’s uncomfortable. It feels unsafe. The kids, I love you. But you’re going home on the first flight tomorrow morning on Monday. And thank God that motherly instinct kicked in, because I would have been devastated had my children had to witness what I witnessed on Wednesday.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You really paint a really visceral picture there.

MACE: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Tell me a little bit about what people were saying to you, your constituents who had come all the way up from Charleston, South Carolina, wherever, saying…

MACE: Right.

AMANPOUR: … of course it’s all a lie, of course it was rigged, you have got to do something about it.

MACE: Right. Well, and I was accosted on the street of D.C. on Tuesday night, the night — the eve of the rally on Wednesday, as you mentioned earlier, by a constituent who drove all the way from my district from South Carolina to attend this — quote, unquote — “peaceful protest,” which ended up being anything but. And what I realized when — at that moment, one, it was dangerous, but, two, it didn’t matter what I said. People were not going to believe the truth, because they’d been lied to. The president of the United States fleeced the American people. He said that Congress could overturn the outcome of the Electoral College. And we simply didn’t have the constitutional right, authority or power to do so. He also told the American people that the vice president could single-handedly overthrow the results of the Electoral College, also false. And thank God — and I praise Vice President Mike Pence, who put an end to that rumor, to that dishonest statement by the president on Wednesday. But people have been lied to for two months now. And it’s disturbing. It led to this violence, the rhetoric that has been ratcheted up over the last two weeks. And what I saw on Wednesday, I hope to never see in my life again. In fact, that video that we have all seen across the country where that young woman was shot, I had to walk by a crime scene to get into the chamber to vote on what was — should have been a ceremonial vote to certify the Electoral College on Wednesday, but it was anything but. And it’s just — I have never seen anything like it. It was the best and worst week of my life.