Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) went after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday afternoon after he shared a photo of her in a social media post griping about Fox News.
But if she expected her comments to, as the kids say, “win the internet,” she was sorely mistaken.
Fox News ignited the feud with a story about how Graham Farrar, the co-founder of Glass House Farms, a California cannabis farm raided by federal immigration authorities, had previously donated $10,000 to Newsom.
Newsom decided to respond to Fox’s hand-wringing about Democrats, immigrants and cannabis with receipts — tweeting a photo of Farrar’s co-founder, Kyle Kazan, posing with none other than the right-wing Mace.
“Sure is rich for Fox News and the Trump Admin to point to campaign donations to Democrats, when in fact, the CEO is a Trump supporter who donated to my recall and has given to more Republicans,” Newsom posted.
A Los Angeles Times report about the raid noted that Kazan is an ex-cop and supporter of Donald Trump, something Newsom also noted.
Mace, who has in fact supported cannabis legalization in the past, clearly wasn’t pleased that the Democratic governor had called her out.
So she responded to Newsom with her own post, which ignored the points of Newsom’s tweet but contained some red meat for her base ― including mentions of George Soros and (checks notes) “m*rderers, r*pists, and p*dophiles” she claimed were “walking free” under Newsom’s watch.
Oh, and she challenged the governor to a debate so she could “emasculate every one” of his positions.
Newsom hadn’t responded to Mace’s debate offer as of Friday afternoon. Neither Mace’s nor Newsom’s offices immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.
However, Mace’s tough talk didn’t get a lot of support online, and it’s partially due to Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking young women and girls.
Earlier this week, Trump-appointed officials in the DOJ and FBI claimed that there is no evidence of an Epstein client list, nor evidence that the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier was murdered, dashing a couple of right-wing consipracy theories.
Ever since then, disenchanted MAGA fans have become slightly less convinced that the GOP itself actually cares about stopping “m*rderers, r*pists, and p*dophiles.”
People on social media were quick to point out that Mace’s claims about criminality running rampant under Democrats seemed hypocritical at best.