[ CYPHER CODE #386 ]
Nancy Mace flips faster than a gold medal gymnast.

[ CYPHER CODE #387 ]
Nancy goes wherever the political wind takes her.

[ CYPHER CODE #388 ]
Every “stance” she takes comes with an expiration date.

[ CYPHER CODE #389 ]
Her loyalty lasts about one news cycle.

[ CYPHER CODE #390 ]
Nancy Mace isn’t confused. She’s calculating.

BRIEFING

Jett here. Nancy Mace loves to tell the world she pulled herself up from nothing, and parts of that story are true. But the more you dig, the more obvious it becomes that her greatest talent isn’t resilience. It’s reinvention. Let’s get into it.

Mace grew up in Fort Bragg and the South Carolina Lowcountry. She was raised by a retired Army General and a schoolteacher. She waited tables at Waffle House, dropped out of high school, then made history as the first woman to graduate from The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets. She earned degrees, built a career. And yes, that journey took grit. But once she stepped into politics, grit wasn’t the driving force anymore. Opportunism was.

Her big political break came during January 6th, when she arrived in The Swamp as a freshman rep and immediately sensed an opening for herself. She had worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, but the second she thought MAGA was dead, she tried to help bury it. People around her say she declared she was “NeverTrump” behind closed doors, and her public statements at the time backed that up. She didn’t just distance herself from Trump. She went hard, believing she could step in as one of the new “voices” of the GOP, now that Trump was done. There was no coming back from J6, right? She thought the tide had turned. She thought it was her moment. She totally misread the room.

The truth is, Nancy Mace’s political record isn’t built on conviction. It shifts whenever she thinks a new stance will elevate or save her. That’s why people around her keep describing her as someone who follows attention, not principles. The pattern is obvious in how she talks, how she votes, and who she aligns with from week to week. Even people who support her admit she blows with the political winds.

And that’s where the real difference comes in. Yes, people can genuinely evolve and change in their politics. President Trump did in many ways. JD Vance did. Speaking of Vance, he didn’t just change his mind. He changed his behavior and keeps proving it, over and over. Nancy Mace has never taken that path. Her shifts aren’t growth. They’re reactions to whatever direction she thinks will benefit her in the moment.

Her recent stunt with Cory Mills was another example of this performative politics she likes to play in. She claimed she tried to censure him to take away the Dems’ “bargaining chip.” That move wasn’t strategy. It wasn’t strategy. It was a move that undercut her own side, and everyone inside the House knows it. It made no sense politically, and it looked a lot more like she was using a rumored backroom deal as a chance to strike at someone she personally clashes with. If Nancy really wanted to be a hero, why not name the people making these “backroom” deals on the House floor and let the chips fall where they may? That would've been a boss move, but Nancy doesn't do "boss moves," she's too calculated for that.

Her supporters praised the move by claiming Cory Mills somehow “deserved” it because he was one of the four Republicans who didn’t vote to censure Ilhan Omar. They leave out the part where Mills has always stood on a First Amendment, anti-censure principle. He’s a genuinely pro-Trump lawmaker who stays consistent even when it’s unpopular. Meanwhile, the same people cheering Nancy forget that she voted to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt, and he went to jail. Mace's "Mills stunt" looked a lot more like a chance to hit a political enemy than anything resembling strategy.

And that’s the pattern. Nancy Mace has never seen a scandal or a storyline she couldn’t bend toward herself. She breaks with conservatives on abortion. She supports key portions of the transgender agenda for minors, granted she does stop short at surgery for kids. Mace shifts positions on Trump depending on what she thinks will play that day and how it will impact her career.

And then there was the Epstein saga, where she walked onto the House floor wearing a little white dress and a school girl bow, standing next to a former enemy (Marjorie Taylor Greene) and turning the entire moment into a personal performance. Instead of focusing on the victims or the evidence, she made the spotlight her mission and delivered a monologue that felt like bad dinner theatre.

Nancy Mace isn’t guided by conviction. She’s guided by opportunity. And every major moment in her political career has reflected that same pattern: find the spotlight, step into it, and hope no one remembers what she said the day before. And before anyone dismisses the next part as “fake news,” keep this in mind: the quotes come from her own colleagues. Republicans. Staffers. People who have watched her flip, swerve, and reinvent herself up close. The outlet is just the container. Nancy’s own words, her pattern, and her actions are the truth.

Here’s how people inside her own party describe that pattern when they’re speaking freely:

SOURCE

Multiple Republican lawmakers asked about her political positioning, speaking only on condition of anonymity, described Mace as a pendulum — swinging toward then away from Trump, followed by an overcorrection when she realized the GOP base began to rally behind him again after Democrats impeached him for a second time over Jan. 6.

After getting back in her party’s good graces by swinging at Democrats, though, Mace’s anti-Bannon vote surprised many of her colleagues.

“She was all about President Trump, until Jan. 6. She basically stabbed him in the back and her voters in the back, and I think that’s terrible,” said Greene, who grouped Mace in with other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.

“She’s an anomaly,” one senior House Republican said. ”I’m not sure what her political calculation is all the time, but I guess maybe she’s gonna say she’s doing it on principle … I don’t really understand the game she’s playing.”

It takes one to know one. Even MTG called her out as a backstabber. Everybody knows she’s opportunistic. It’s the worst kept secret in the Swamp. Even the people who defended her at one point quietly admit she jumps toward whatever gets her the most oxygen. And the receipts don’t stop with Trump, Bannon, or Cory Mills.

Here’s another moment that exposes the pattern.

SOURCE

In 2023 Mace surprised observers when she joined with some of the Republican Party’s most extreme members, including Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, to oust, for the first time in history, the sitting speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.

Mace’s move to the right is seen by her opponents as pure political opportunism. She has been roundly criticized as taking positions that put her in the political limelight to further her ambitions. She has responded by saying that her male counterparts don’t face the same criticism as she does: “I don’t see Tim Scott or Lindsey Graham [South Carolina’s senators] getting attacked the way that I do and they’re on TV more than I am.” Voters in her district seemed to understand that Mace’s swing to the right was part of the game. “It’s politics—hello,” a Mace voter told The New York Times in 2023.

You can see Nancy Mace’s pattern everywhere, but nowhere is it clearer than the moment she first splashed onto the national scene. After campaigning for Trump in 2016, Nancy walked into Congress during the chaos of January 6th and treated the entire moment like her personal breakout audition. She was convinced Trump was finished and MAGA was over. Nancy figured the base would scatter, and she adjusted herself accordingly. Fast.

Here’s what she said on CNN when she thought Trump’s political career was dead and buried.

SOURCE

“Everything that he’s worked for … all of that, his entire legacy, was wiped out yesterday,” Mace told CNN on 7 January 2021. “We’ve got to start over.”

On 11 January, Mace said: “We have to hold the president accountable for what happened. The rhetoric leading up to this vote, the lies that were told to the American people – this is what happens, rhetoric has real consequences. And people died.”

It sounds like Nancy, a freshman rep barely sworn in, was fully blaming President Trump and his “rhetoric” for everything that happened on January 6th, including the death of Ashli Babbitt. But her J6 takes didn’t stop there. They got even worse.

While the country was unraveling, while members of Congress were overreacting and "sheltering in place," Nancy was thinking about how to turn the chaos into her own personal launchpad. According to multiple former staffers, she told her team she was a “NeverTrumper” as the "fedsurrection" unfolded and started asking if confronting the crowd on camera would help establish her new anti-Trump identity.

Her own aides said they had to stop her from trying to stage a "viral moment" for social media.

But it gets even darker.

Several people who were with her that day say she pushed the idea even further. They claim she wanted to go out onto the House floor, get into the chaos, and “get punched in the face” so she could score national attention.

This woman had been in office for three days. Three days, and she was already calculating how to turn violence into a branding opportunity.

SOURCE

Ms Mace told her staff during the Capitol riot that she was a “never-Trumper”. She made the suggestion to her staff regarding the possible confrontation as she was hiding with aides in her Cannon House building office, which is part of the Capitol complex, while they watched the rioters enter the congressional building on TV.

Her former aides told The Post that she thought that if there was footage being shared on social media showing her confronting the rioters, it would solidify her anti-Trump role, but her staff pushed back on this suggestion, pointing to guidance from US Capitol Police, and Ms Mace eventually relented.

“What you write doesn’t pass for real journalism,” Ms Mace told The Post when asked about the incident.

Three people also told The Daily Beast that Ms Mace said she wanted to “get punched in the face” on January 6, 2021.

“She literally begged us to let her leave the office and head to the floor so she could ‘get punched in the face’ and ‘get media attention,’” a former aide told the outlet. “That’s word for word what she requested.”

“She had been in office for three days, if that tells you anything about her motivation,” the ex-aide said, who told The Daily Beast that “several” people in the office heard Ms Mace’s suggestion.

And before anyone rushes to call all of this “fake news,” here’s the part people conveniently forget: right after J6, Nancy Mace wasn’t some right-wing villain the left wanted to destroy. She had just spent her first week in Congress trashing Trump, distancing herself from MAGA, and pitching herself as the future of a “new GOP.” Democrats actually loved her. She was their shiny new crossover star... the sign that Trump was dead.

SOURCE

Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat from California, praised Mace as the kind of Republican that Democrats could work with and added, “If the Republican conference had everyone of Nancy Mace’s temperament and ideology, we’d be in a much better place in our country.”

And why wouldn't the left love her? She was positioning herself as the cool "new Republican," one who was hip and supported pronouns for kids, and pushed back on the right when it came to parts of the anti-abortion agenda. Nancy made sure to go on CNN, to call her party "assholes to women."

SOURCE

 GOP Rep. Nancy Mace has a warning for her party about some efforts to restrict abortion without exceptions – and how it could affect moderate House Republicans on whom their narrow majority depends.

“I think they’re walking the plank,” the South Carolina Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview that aired Sunday, when asked if members in moderate districts like hers are doomed.

“I’m pro-life. I have a fantastic pro-life voting record, but I also understand that we cannot be a**holes to women,” said Mace, who has been vocal about including exceptions for rape in measures to restrict the procedure.

Does Nancy really believe most people support little kids having pronouns and dressing like the opposite gender? Someone should ask her that.

SOURCE

One of Mace’s most stark pivots in position, however, appeared to be on the issue of LGBTQ rights. As recently as 2023 the “socially sensible” Mace said she thought it was fine for children to change their pronouns, hairstyles, or clothing as they explored being “who you want to be,” and added, “Those are all things that I think most people would support.”

Nancy also backed the queen of the NeverTrump movement, Liz Cheney. She even campaigned for her right at the peak of Cheney’s TDS meltdown. This article is from 2021.

SOURCE

A little over two weeks ago, my news outlet reported on Mace’s participation in fundraising events with congresswoman Liz Cheney – who earlier this week lost her leadership position within the U.S. House Republican caucus. Like Rice, Cheney was among the ten GOP members of the House who voted to impeach Trump.

Cheney has become Trump’s top target for defeat in the 2020 Republican primary elections – and the vote to oust her from her leadership position within the GOP caucus was widely viewed as a “litmus test” of support for the former president.

But her most shameless move was voting to refer Steve Bannon for criminal contempt. Many would argue that was Nancy signaling she was fully on board with the Deep State’s J6 takedown of MAGA.

SOURCE

She voted to refer a criminal contempt charge against Bannon:

So House Republicans were surprised to see the South Carolinian vote on Thursday to refer a criminal contempt case against Trump ally Stephen Bannon to the Justice Department after Bannon defied a subpoena from the Democratic-led Jan. 6 select committee. Mace was joined by only eight other Republicans, most of whom had agreed to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot, and sat near GOP leadership staff on the House floor after casting her vote.

But then something happened. The political tide started shifting in a big way, and Nancy, always with her finger in the air to check the wind, felt it blowing in a different direction. Trump and MAGA weren't dead after all. So, the political opportunist had to make changes.

SOURCE

She changed her tune quickly, when the tide turned and went pro-trump:
So did Mace fashion herself as a new face of a party in desperate need of a makeover after the violent pro-Trump riot. But the wave of Trump criticism that Republicans rode after Jan. 6, particularly from Mace and fellow lawmakers who carried more purple states or districts, ebbed away fairly quickly. Her criticisms faded with it.

Mace decided being NeverTrump wasn’t in political fashion anymore, so she switched gears. And instead of touching anything tied to Trump, since she was being called a "hypocrite" yet again, she pivoted to taking shots at popular Dem newcomers like AOC.But the irony here is unreal. She used AOC’s claims of “trauma” during J6 as her new battleground, even though Mace was one of Trump’s harshest critics at the time and acted on camera like J6 was the worst thing to hit the country since 9/11. But suddenly Nancy was now using the very same moment to fundraise, attack AOC, and rack up “based” MAGA points.

SOURCE:

The 43-year-old instead took on high-profile Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fundraising off of an effort to dismiss the younger New York progressive’s story of trauma during the insurrection.

But eventually the day came when the once pro-Trump, anti-Trump, then (sort of) pro-Trump-again congresswoman had to answer for her constant flip-flops. Nancy tried to soft-pedal it, claiming she “stayed out of it” but now had to unite behind Trump. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. It sounded more like she was still hedging her bets, holding out hope that maybe DeSantis would pull off a Hail Mary.

SOURCE

The Republican South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace faced widespread accusations of hypocrisy after she endorsed Donald Trump – the presidential candidate she previously said she held “accountable” for the January 6 attack on Congress.

On Monday, Mace announced her endorsement, a day before the New Hampshire primary, in which Trump enjoys comfortable polling leads over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, his only remaining opponent.

“I don’t see eye to eye perfectly with any candidate,” Mace said. “And until now I’ve stayed out of it. But the time has come to unite behind our nominee.”

Now fast-forward to today, and Nancy is once again reinventing herself. She’s latched onto Marjorie Taylor Greene, who she used to fight with in nasty fashion, using the Epstein saga as her new soapbox and turning it into her own personal spotlight, angelic white dress, school-girl bow and all. But Nancy has bigger ambitions. She’s got her eye on the South Carolina governor’s mansion, and she’s angling hard for a Trump endorsement. And in the most ironic twist of all, the same woman who trashed Trump, backed his enemies, and helped imprison his supporters is now rebranding herself yet again... calling herself “Trump in High Heels.”

SOURCE

"I want to take what's broken in South Carolina, and I want to burn it down to the ground and build it right back up, right where it needs to be, because you've earned it. You deserve it, and you deserve someone who's going to work 24/7. I don't sleep. I went to bed at 1 a.m., and I was up at 4 a.m. OK, I am Trump in high heels. I love what I am doing. I mean, he doesn't sleep," she said.

Will President Trump endorse Nancy Mace? Well, if the polling numbers line up, probably. Politics is a game, and Trump has her number. Her final flip flop in 2024, won her his endorsement, which is what she needed to keep her congressional seat.

SOURCE

Trump enthusiastically backed Mace for Congress in 2024 after she endorsed him in the state's presidential primary. Their support for each other was a change after an earlier clash. One day after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Mace said Trump's "entire legacy" was "wiped out" by the siege. Later, during the 2022 midterms, Trump called Mace "terrible" and a letdown.

Trump has not yet publicly commented on Mace's recent request for his endorsement.

DEBRIEFING

Nancy Mace built her career on reinvention. Every time the political weather shifts, she shifts with it. That is the pattern. It shows up in her J6 pivot. It shows up in her NeverTrump pivot. It shows up in her sudden MAGA revival. It shows up in every stunt, every alliance, every reversal, and every headline she chases.

And that is what people in her own party talk about behind closed doors. They have watched her bounce from one identity to the next depending on what gets the most traction that week. They are not confused by her behavior. They are tired of pretending it is anything but opportunism.

Which brings us to now.

I don't think Trump trusts Nancy Mace as far as he could throw her. And he has good reason not to. Her entire political record tells the same story. She goes wherever the wind blows. But would he back her for governor? Sure, if the polls show she can win, he probably would.

But here's the part MAGA needs to hear. Like President Trump, I'm not actively trying to oust her, I just don't trust her, and neither should you.

If Nancy votes with the movement, fine. If she helps advance America First policies, great. Politics is a numbers game. You take the votes you can get. But that does not make her a hero. That does not make her a warrior for the movement. That does not make her someone you trust with the future.

Her track record tells you exactly who she is.

NOW YOU KNOW

Nancy Mace is useful when it benefits Nancy Mace. And when the incentive changes, so will she. The danger is not that she exists. The danger is pretending she is something she has never been.