Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the famed military college of South Carolina. Her career rise has been meteoric and her national profile as an influential voice in the Republican Party has grown in lockstep with her move further to the right as one of Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters and a MAGA stalwart.
The Congresswoman has also picked up a few of Trump’s tendencies, and one of them is the occasional withholding of personal respect for adversaries, an example of which stirs the argument below as Mace refuses to properly pronounce the first name of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President.
Even after a minute and a half of lacerating discussion about racism, respect, womanhood and white supremacy’s tactics, Mace again antagonizes the panel by repeating her mispronunciation, bringing admonition from the participants and a plain accusation: “You’re doing this on purpose, Congresswoman.”
Wow this is show is going off pic.twitter.com/KRoIgjyddY
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 16, 2024
Prof. Michael Eric Dyson of Vanderbilt University called Mace a “wonderful human being” who when she “disrespects Kamala Harris by saying you’ll call her whatever you want” is exhibiting “the history and legacy of White disregard for the humanity of Black people.”
Mace replied: “Oh so now you’re calling me racist. That’s BS.” She also called the assertion, as she interpreted it, “disgusting.”
Dyson replied “What’s disgusting is you’re disrespect of [Harris].”
Mace then asserted that Harris disrespects women, even saying that Harris “doesn’t know what a woman is.”
Dyson replied: “White women don’t have the ability to tell Black women — who paid the price of blood to make this country what it is — to tell them they’re not real women.”
When Mace began to talk about her own accomplishment in graduating from The Citadel, demanding respect for it, Dyson replied: “So call her name right. Pronounce her name right. Pronounce her name right.”
Mace answered by mispronouncing Kamala again.