Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted on Friday that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse and a threat.” The post received 7.6 million views by Sunday, at which point Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington had called it “absolutely disgusting and dangerous” and urged Republicans to condemn what she termed Mace’s “blatant Islamophobia.” Mace’s response was to embrace the characterization as a point of pride while demonstrating she could not spell it: “I don’t want to get stabbed or blown up by a suicide bomber — nor do I want to hear the call to prayer five times a day in the United States of America. Total Islamaphobe here.” She misspelled “Islamophobe” with an ‘a’ where the ‘o’ belongs. The post remains live.
The “every single Muslim” formulation is not ambiguous about its scope. It includes Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, two Muslim members of the House of Representatives elected by American voters in American congressional elections. It includes every Muslim serving in city councils, state legislatures, state judiciary systems, and federal agencies across the country. All of these people, by Mace’s formulation, are trojan horses and threats. She posted this on a Friday. By Sunday she was confirming, with a misspelling, that the description applied to herself as an admirer of the position.
Mace’s post is part of a pattern that Raw Story’s confirmed reporting traces across multiple Republican lawmakers. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, who recently lost his primary to a dairy farmer after a solar PAC spent $2 million opposing him, had posted in March that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” and blamed a staffer. Rep. Randy Fine of Florida had come under fire for suggesting Muslims were worth less than dogs. All three emerged in the same period. Mace’s post is the one that received 7.6 million views, which is either because her platform is larger or because “trojan horse and a threat” is more specific than the preceding entries in the genre.
Raw Story’s reporting also notes that the rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric among American lawmakers has coincided with reporting on an influence campaign linked to Israel’s government. An Al Jazeera investigation found that Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs had funneled roughly $2 million to a Tel Aviv-based marketing firm that used AI-generated content and networks of fake social media accounts to spread pro-Israel narratives and Islamophobic material aimed at American and Canadian audiences. The investigation ran in 2024. The posts from Ogles, Fine, and Mace ran in 2026. The relationship between the two is a matter of what the word “coincided” is designed to communicate.
Mace is the outgoing representative for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. She lost her gubernatorial primary in June to a Trump-backed opponent. She had been discussed as a potential candidate for Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat before she lost the governorship race. South Carolina holds a special election to fill that seat today. Mace is not on the ballot. She is on social media with 7.6 million views of the Muslim-threat post and a follow-up confirming she is a proud “Islamaphobe,” spelled incorrectly, in a state that is holding a Senate special election she cannot enter because she lost a different race two months ago.
Trump himself recently misspelled “Americas” in a social media post, which Raw Story noted in the same article about Mace, under the observation that Mace “echoed her idol in another way.” Both the position on Muslims and the misspelling are documented in the same reporting. Both have received significant attention. Neither has produced a formal condemnation from the Republican leadership, which is the specific silence that the pattern depends on.
She posted it. She confirmed it. She misspelled it. The Republican leadership said nothing.
When a congresswoman declares every Muslim officeholder a threat and then misspells her own bigotry in the follow-up and the party leadership stays silent, what exactly is the Republican Party’s position?
Sources
Raw Story: Flailing Trump ally stuns with wild misspelled admission
