Rep. Nancy Mace used the latest episode of her podcast this week to attack Democrats she described as unable to answer simple questions. She targeted former Vice President Kamala Harris, progressive streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, and laid out her own plan to end the war with Iran.
The South Carolina Republican, who has about three months left in Congress, framed the episode around what she called yes or no questions that politicians dodge.
“Good evening. I’m Congresswoman Nancy Mace and you’re just now tuning into the Get MACED podcast,” Mace said. “Tonight’s episode is all about questions in politics and the people who can’t answer them. And every question we’re going to go over tonight has a yes or no answer. So keep count tonight.”
She acknowledged her own record. “Full disclosure, I am a congresswoman. I have three months left as a sitting House member in the House of Representatives. So I’m a politician. I’ve dodged a yes or no question a time or two myself. I know something about this,” she said.
Mace is retiring from Congress after losing the South Carolina gubernatorial primary, and her “Get Maced” podcast serves as a venue for her to comment on current events.
Mace first turned to Harris, who flew into Detroit on Tuesday for a roundtable with El-Sayed focused on Black maternal health. The event took place at Birth Detroit on Sept. 22.
“There are two people that want to be the future of the Democrat Party,” Mace said. “One of them held a roundtable for moms this week and that would be Kamala Harris. Make sure you say her name the right way. She held a moms’ roundtable but couldn’t say the word mom. And the other one wants to put Chuck Schumer in a dunce cap.”
Mace said potential 2028 contenders are already traveling the country. “Pete Buttigieg is on the campaign trail. Gavin Newsom is on the campaign trail. Gavin says he’s not going to run if Kamala runs. Now I don’t believe one word of that. I think Gavin is running no matter what,” she said.
She played a clip from the roundtable in which participants, not Harris, spoke.
“More Black women are going to die,” one participant said.
“That’s right,” another replied.
“And we have to say that so plainly. And I believe you bring more than the talk and more than the promise. And that’s what the people of Michigan need from you, from our leaders. That’s what Black women and Black birthing people need in order to move themselves forward, their families forward, their communities forward, this state forward, and this country forward,” the participant said.
Mace criticized Harris for not objecting to the term.
“We’re talking about the first female vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, and they’re talking about Black birthing people. And Kamala just sits there and nods her head like all of this is normal,” Mace said. “It’s so disrespectful to Black people. It’s so disrespectful to mothers. It’s disrespectful to women. And the feminists just sit there and nod their heads.”
Mace added: “If you go look it up, pull out your Merriam Webster dictionary, there’s three words. It says adult, human, female. That’s how it defines woman in the dictionary. If you have ovaries, you’re a woman. If you have a uterus, you’re a woman. If you have a cervix, you’re a woman. If you don’t have any of those things, you’re not a woman. Doesn’t matter how much makeup you put on. We’re not birthing people. We have children.”
Mace, the first female graduate of The Citadel’s Corps of Cadets in 1999, recalled wearing a skirt at graduation. “I wanted to remind people that I was a real bona fide woman crossing that stage, and a skirt and all,” she said. “I’m a mom and nobody in the delivery room called me birthing person, white birthing person. No one ever said that. They called me other names, other things in the delivery room. Maybe crazy because I didn’t have painkillers.”
She also cited a 2024 campaign ad she said hurt Harris. “The ad that took down Kamala Harris, all the pundits say, in the 2024 presidential election was an ad that said Kamala is for they/them and President Trump is for you,” Mace said. “Kamala was in a room full of moms. She didn’t rethink anything. She couldn’t rethink anything. There were no thoughts.”
At the event itself, Harris spoke with Black mothers about maternal health outcomes and the struggles of health care workers, and outlined what she called the stakes of the 2026 election for health care. She said one in 12 U.S. women live in what she called maternal health care deserts.
Mace also responded to a Reason magazine reporter who called her a bully over her comments about Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly transgender member of Congress.
“I was called a bully this week. I’m not a bully. I’m just a woman standing up for women’s rights,” Mace said. “I pointed out that Congressman Sarah McBride, whose real name is Tim McBride, who was born Tim McBride, he cosplays as a woman, he dresses as a woman, he has long hair, wears makeup, and thinks he’s a woman. And I’m just going to blanket diagnose everyone. Every man who thinks he’s a woman has a mental issue.”
“Tim McBride can put on a dress. He can put on makeup. He can wear high heels to work. I don’t really care,” she said. “But that doesn’t make him a woman. That doesn’t give him the ability to invade our spaces, come into our bathroom or our locker room or our sports.”
“So ladies, be louder,” Mace said. “You can’t protect women if you don’t know what they are. You can’t protect women if you can’t define them.”
Mace then turned to Piker, a popular progressive streamer who has campaigned with El-Sayed.
“He is a Democrat streamer. He has millions of fans. He said, ‘America deserved 9/11.’ He has the Twin Towers hanging up in a framed photo in his office,” Mace said.
She played a clip of Piker speaking on a stream:
“Like, I will throw you in prison. OK, I want to put you physically behind a prison. I want Chinese style communism to happen inside of the Democratic Party right now. OK, I want to do cultural revolution sh** when I see that. OK, we’re doing a struggle session. Chuck Schumer, get on the [expletive] c*** stage. OK, people can now throw their old tomatoes at Chuck Schumer. Get on the c*** stage now. Explain to us your counterrevolutionary behavior right now, Chuck Schumer.”
While the clips appear to have first been posted to X this week, The Tennessee Star determined that Piker originally made the comments during a Jan. 28, 2025, livestream from Japan, directed at Schumer and other Democrats over their response to Trump’s early second term actions.
Mace offered what she called a history lesson on China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 under Mao Zedong.
“Cultural revolution that Hasan Piker is referencing sounds like it’s a music festival. It’s not,” Mace said. “Teenagers called the Red Guards. First on their list were their own teachers. A crowd drags you on stage. Dunce cap on your head. A sign around your neck. You bow. You confess. They scream at you, a lot of times, and then they beat you.”
“That’s what he wants to do to Chuck Schumer. This is a dangerous guy because when you give these people ideas, they might actually do it,” she said.
Mace noted that Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s father was purged during that era. “Even China’s Communist Party says Mao’s tenure was an effing disaster. They put that in writing in 1981,” she said. “Hasan Piker is to the left of the Chinese Communist Party. How does he still have a blue American passport? Why do we still let this guy in? Why do we let him stay here? Send him to China. I mean, I don’t know who would take him, quite honestly. I don’t even think Egypt would take him. I bet Iran would.”
Piker is a U.S. citizen.
“The way that you beat Chuck Schumer isn’t by beating him. Literally, beat him at the ballot box. Do it with votes, not tomatoes, not with fists,” Mace said.
Her remarks come amid heightened concern about political violence, a little more than a year after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a campus event in Utah.
The segment that drew Mace’s sharpest criticism involved El-Sayed’s exchange with a student at a University of Michigan town hall Wednesday at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, titled “Students vs. Billionaires.” The student, Iman Dashti, who identified himself as Persian, told El-Sayed his family had suffered under Iran’s government, and said a relative had been sentenced to death and given 50 lashes.
“The terror that we have experienced is insurmountable. And you can imagine our surprise as Persians, our sadness when we heard you, Abdul, a leaked audio tape of you saying that you didn’t want to comment on Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death and that people in Dearborn were sad when he died. And I just have a simple question, Abdul,” the student said in the clip Mace played.
El-Sayed replied: “And I will always stand. Like I told you, I will always stand with movements for freedom and democracy. But again, I want to be careful because how many times were we taken down a path to war that we could not get ourselves out of? Trillions of dollars in losses.”
The student interrupted: “You still haven’t said it though. We’re dying. The IRGC, do you stand with us?”
“So, when it comes down to it, I will always stand for and with democratic movements. Always,” El-Sayed said. “But I also don’t believe that we were in the right to go to war to topple the government of Iran. It was not our responsibility to do it. It is the responsibility of the people of Iran to decide what their leadership should look like.”
“This was a yes or no question. It was that simple,” Mace said. “Instead of answering yes or no, he gave a TED talk to an Iranian American citizen who knows firsthand how bad the IRGC is. Abdul was too afraid of the mob, too afraid of the commies, too afraid of the jihadist adjacent Democrats in his party to push back against a terrorist regime.”
After the exchange, El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said in a statement that he “condemns government anti free speech violence.”
Mace mocked the statement. “Murder is not anti speech violence. We’re talking about political assassinations,” she said. “That’s how you describe a heckler at a comedy club, not a terrorist. The IRGC doesn’t heckle, they just execute you.”
“Our own government has called the IRGC a terrorist organization since 2019, and Abdul El-Sayed couldn’t bring himself to do the same,” Mace said.
In a later interview, Dashti told a conservative outlet: “Just say you’re against the world’s largest sponsor of terror.” El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, wrote on X that El-Sayed “can’t even condemn a terrorist dictator murdering thousands of his own people.” El-Sayed and Rogers are running for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
Mace also referred to the leaked audio in which El-Sayed declined to comment on the ayatollah’s death because of Dearborn residents, and made remarks about the city’s immigrant community.
“Why the [expletive] are these people here? Why the [expletive] are they in Dearborn, Michigan? Why did we let them in? And then why do we let them in and let them stay? Why do we have this suicidal empathy in this country?” Mace said. “They chant death to America in Michigan. Yeah, they’re right. This is death to America. Allowing these people in eventually it will lead to all of our deaths.”
“It is just a complete dumpster fire in the Democrat Party right now,” she said. “That Iranian American student and his family will never get to change the subject. So the question is still open. Abdul, the IRGC, terrorist organization or not?”
Mace spent the final portion of the episode on the war with Iran, which Trump launched Feb. 28 and which she said has lasted seven months.
“I want this war over and I want it over yesterday,” Mace said. “I voted for the War Powers Resolution. It came out of the House. There were seven Republicans, seven of us that voted for the War Powers Resolution. It goes to the Senate. The Senate needs to vote on it before the next election.”
The House passed that resolution 220 to 204 on Sept. 15, the third time the chamber voted to end the war. Mace had taken the opposite position in March, when she said she voted against a war powers resolution “without hesitation.”
“You can be against the war and be against the IRGC. The two are not the same,” she said.
Mace cited rising costs. “Gas is at about, today, right now, $4.47 a gallon. And it’s actually higher than that in South Carolina for 87 unleaded, the least expensive one. Diesel’s up to $6.50 plus these days,” she said. AAA put the national average this week at $4.48 a gallon, the highest ever for this time of year, and national diesel prices sat at a record $6.51.
“I wish we could just do sanctions and get the h*** out of there. But the problem is that sanctions don’t work. And now that we’re in this thing, how the h*** do we get out?” Mace said.
She played a clip of Trump discussing talks at the United Nations General Assembly.
“How was that conversation, Mr. President?” a reporter asked.
“It was a very good meeting. I mean, I must tell you, it’s very good. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to do it. It’s potential greatness or obliteration,” Trump said.
In a second clip, Trump said: “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness for generations? But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election.”
“Both can be true, and that’s what we call leverage in this country when you’re negotiating,” Mace said.
Mace described the envoys as meeting Iran’s foreign minister directly, but special envoy Steve Witkoff later indicated that he and Jared Kushner did not meet the Iranians face to face, and said mediators shuttled between the two sides throughout the day. Iranian state television said Iran’s conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz include lifting the naval blockade, releasing frozen assets and ending the war on all fronts.
“So far, 18 Americans have been killed, maybe more. $33.4 billion alone has been spent in the first four months of the war,” Mace said. “Before the war, about 125 big ships a day went through the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, there were two ships that made it through. This is going to be cataclysmic. Every week that the Strait of Hormuz stays shut, you pay for it at the pump. You pay for it when you go to the grocery store.”
She said Iran wants about $24 billion in frozen assets up front and has added Yemen to its demands. “Negotiating with Iran is like buying a used car. You agree on a price and then they up the price,” Mace said. “It’s like a bad ex but worse because they kill people.”
Mace outlined a seven step plan. First, a 30 day ceasefire. “If Iran can stop shooting, a lot can get done in the next 30 days,” she said. Second, a direct meeting between Trump and Iran’s president. “The president is the master negotiator,” she said.
Third, frozen money would be held by a third country, such as Qatar or Oman, and released in four installments for food and medicine only. “Tehran should not get $24 billion cash up front for doing nothing. There’s no incentive for them to behave if they get free cash,” Mace said.
Fourth, inspectors at Iran’s nuclear sites before any money is released. “Iran can never have a bomb,” she said. “I can’t say what I’ve been told in a SCIF. I will tell you it’s different from what other people in the administration had been told.”
Fifth, a tripwire. “If Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz, they don’t get another dime. Not for food, not for medicine, for nothing,” she said, adding that “the last ceasefire fell apart in June.” Other reporting places the collapse of an interim ceasefire in July.
Sixth, keeping Yemen out of any deal. Seventh, a Senate vote on the agreement as a treaty. “A deal Congress votes on is harder for the next president to abscond, to get away with, or walk away from,” Mace said.
“Ending the war doesn’t mean losing it. Ending the war can mean winning it,” she said. “Prove it first, get paid later. That’s the Iran deal that should be happening.”
Mace closed by returning to her four questions: whether a woman is an adult human female, whether the Cultural Revolution was bad, whether candidates stand against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and whether Iran should open the strait before getting its money back.
“The answer is yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. I said that in less than 4 seconds. You did, too. This isn’t hard,” Mace said. “And if you’re running for any office and you don’t know the answer to those four questions, you shouldn’t be running for anything at all.”
