Trump’s hot-and-cold flip on Mace shakes SC race

Trump’s hot-and-cold – South Carolina’s GOP governor primary is turning into a loyalty test after President Donald Trump first appeared to stay out of the race, then endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette hours later—denting Rep. Nancy Mace’s message that she alone had his backing. Polling

The whiplash came fast, and in South Carolina, speed matters.

On May 29, Rep. Nancy Mace posted on X that President Donald Trump had not endorsed her chief rival, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette—accusing Evette of “misrepresenting her ties to the president.” The post included an AI-generated picture of Mace standing next to Trump with both giving thumbs up. and Mace delivered the sharp warning: “Do not believe her lies.”.

Hours later, the president’s stance changed publicly.

Trump endorsed Evette, calling her a “good friend, fighter and winner” who “never wavered” since his first presidential campaign in 2016. For many Republicans in the state. the mismatch between Mace’s confident claim and Trump’s rapid endorsement became a story of its own—one that some in South Carolina politics say left her looking out of step with the reality of Trump’s influence.

“Mace was thinking that Trump was going to stay out of it,” Republican activist Rick Beltram told MISRYOUM. “Clearly when you say something like that, and two minutes later it’s a different outcome, it does make you look a little silly,” he added. “She missed the mark.”

Beltram’s critique landed in a race where Trump’s support is treated like a prize. The president’s endorsements are among the most coveted in Republican primaries nationwide in 2026. and his influence is credited with shaping outcomes from Congress to state legislatures—often through aggressive moves against incumbents who have crossed him.

South Carolina’s GOP primary. in particular. is the kind of contest where the party’s nominee almost guarantees a win in the general election. and where competition has long carried a nasty edge. In the race to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, the field includes Mace and Evette, but also state Attorney General Alan Wilson, Rep. Ralph Norman, and business executive Ron Reddy.

Mace and Evette have spent the final stretch positioning themselves as the closest match to Trump’s political style. Evette, in particular, appears to believe Trump’s backing will be decisive in a state that Trump won by roughly 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.

“This is Trump country. and people feel that the president is doing a great job. ” Evette said in a June 5 interview. “It plays a key role in distinguishing candidates, and I think what this shows is the character of the candidates. People want to see loyalty, they want to see fighters and they want to see people who are like-minded.”.

While Trump’s approval rating in South Carolina has remained steady—Morning Consult has him at 50% approval versus 47% disapproval—his appeal inside the GOP base is still far stronger, and the timing of his endorsement now looks like it changed the math inside the primary.

A Trafalgar Group poll, conducted a week before Trump got involved in the race, put Evette slightly ahead at 19.9%. Wilson was at 19.4%, Reddy at 19%, Norman at 15.9%, and Mace at 14.6%, in a survey with a roughly three percent margin of error.

Then Trump endorsed Evette.

In a survey conducted June 2–4 by the same pollster. Evette’s numbers jumped to a 26.3% lead while none of her competitors exceeded 18%. For conservatives who expect a crowded field to produce a June 23 runoff if no candidate reaches more than 50% of the vote. the shift is being treated as more than messaging—it’s being treated as a turning point.

Each candidate has leaned into Trump ties as part of their pitch. Wilson, for example, has a “Trump Tough” page on his campaign website focused solely on his relationship with the president. It highlights Wilson’s defense of Trump’s executive orders in court and his support for cabinet appointees such as FBI Director Kash Patel.

Beltram described what voters are seeing in their mailboxes: “Our mailboxes have absolutely been flooded by mail pieces from all the candidates, and they all are showing pictures with them standing next to Donald Trump,” he said.

Mace’s relationship with Trump has never been smooth, and her own past clashes now sit in sharper focus. She called herself “Trump in high heels” in 2025, and she has also criticized the president’s moves in ways that didn’t exactly vanish.

Her most recent flashpoint with Trump came last year when she joined three other House Republicans—Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia—to compel the U.S. Justice Department to release its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“I know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files,” Mace said in another May 29 post. “If sacrificing my values is the price of an endorsement, I will never pay it.”

The friction goes back further. Three days after Mace first assumed office, during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, she issued a blistering response from inside her office. She called the attempted insurrection “un-American” and slammed Trump’s rhetoric ahead of the incident. saying: “His entire legacy was wiped out yesterday.”.

Trump responded by calling her a “grandstanding loser” and later endorsed a former state legislator who ran against Mace in the 2022 Republican primary. “Nancy fights Republicans all the time and is not at all nice about it,” Trump said at the time. “Frankly, she is despised by almost everyone, and who needs that in Congress, or in the Republican Party?”.

Mace still won that reelection bid by 14 percentage points.

In the years since. Mace made a noticeable rightward shift toward Trump. saying there was no ill-will as Trump waged a comeback campaign against former President Joe Biden two years ago. She endorsed him during the 2024 Republican primary for president over Nikki Haley. the former governor of South Carolina. who backed her during the feud with Trump.

Mace, in turn, received support in her 2024 reelection bid and spoke at the Republican National Convention after being floated as a possible running mate. But after Trump chose to support her gubernatorial rival, Mace’s online tone changed again.

On May 31, she declared herself the “Iron Lady” in an X post, using an AI-generated picture featuring an image of her sporting the foreign leader’s famous hairstyle. Her social media bio now also says Trump endorsed her in 2024 for Congress.

Asked how she would handle disagreements with the president, Evette—who was an entrepreneur before entering politics—said she values consistency among allies but suggested she wouldn’t mirror the public sparring that many voters associate with Trump.

“The president and I are both business people. we’re not career politicians. so when business people disagree. they don’t take to social media. they don’t take to the news media. ” Evette said. “They call each other and have a conversation. If there was a topic that the president and I maybe wouldn’t see eye to eye on. that is exactly the way I would handle it.”.

The Mace campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Supporters who spoke with MISRYOUM said she remains popular among grassroots conservatives in the state. Marty Irby, president and CEO of Capitol South LLC, a conservative-leaning lobbying firm in Washington, DC, argued that Mace has earned credibility even without relying on Trump.

“She doesn’t need Donald Trump, she doesn’t really need endorsements,” Irby said. “She is a fearless woman. She’s the most fearless member of the House — period — and has more guts than most of the men in this entire town and entire Congress and in the administration.”

The polls, however, suggest otherwise—at least after Trump’s endorsement landed.

The story the race is telling right now is built out of timing: Mace’s insistence that she was the one Trump-backed, Trump’s own sudden embrace of Evette, and a polling jump that followed the endorsement so closely that it has turned a political feud into a measurable advantage.

In a GOP primary where a narrow path can lead to a runoff, and where Trump’s support can redraw the field in days, Mace’s hot-and-cold moment is no longer just a headline. It’s a test of whether loyalty to the president—or the ability to survive without it—decides who gets to move on June 23.

Donald Trump Nancy Mace Pamela Evette South Carolina GOP primary Henry McMaster Alan Wilson Ralph Norman Ron Reddy Kash Patel Epstein files June 9 primary June 23 runoff Trafalgar Group Morning Consult