GOP Rep. Nancy Mace said that Trump ‘put all of our lives at risk’ during the Capitol riots, but rejected impeachment, calling the process ‘rushed’

• Freshman GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s actions related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots “put all of our lives at risk.”
• “We feared for our lives, many of us that day, and our staff,” she said. “My children were supposed to be up there. If they had been there like they were supposed to be, I would have been devastated, so we do need to find a way to hold the president accountable.”
• Despite calling out Trump’s conduct, Mace voted against impeachment, calling the process “rushed.”
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Freshman GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who has been sharply critical of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, said on Sunday that his actions related to the deadly attack “put all of our lives at risk.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mace brought up a bipartisan push to censure Trump that could have been an alternative to the second impeachment of the president, which cleared the House of Representatives 232-197, with ten Republican votes.

Despite calling out Trump’s conduct, she voted against impeachment, describing the process as “rushed” and saying it didn’t give the president due process.

“With censure, that was one of the things that I believe we should have had up for debate,” Mace said. “It’s complex, constitutionally, but there were folks in both chambers and in both parties having the ability to look at that as an option, but we couldn’t even bring it up for debate or look at that as an option because we were really trying hard to figure out how do we hold a president accountable that put all of our lives at risk?”

She described the riots, which resulted in the deaths of five people, as “a traumatic event” for many members.

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“We feared for our lives, many of us that day, and our staff,” she said. “My children were supposed to be up there. If they had been there like they were supposed to be, I would have been devastated, so we do need to find a way to hold the president accountable.”

Mace was then asked about members who continued to object to the presidential election results after the riots, including the top two GOP leaders in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

“I will tell you for me, as a new member, it was enormously disappointing,” she said. “I literally had to walk through a crime scene where that young woman [Ashli Babbitt] was shot and killed to get into the chamber to vote that night to certify what was supposed to be a ceremonial vote to certify the Electoral College. Yet my colleagues continued to object, and they knew this was a failing motion.”

On Jan. 7, Mace said on CNN that that Trump’s “entire legacy was wiped out” in the aftermath of the Capitol riots.

“We’ve got to start over,” she stressed at the time. “We don’t have the ground that we need to push forward and do the things that we need to do to be successful and work for and be the voice for hard-working Americans that believed in his message. We cannot condone the violence … We’ve got to rebuild our nation and rebuild our party.”