Rep. Nancy Mace said on Thursday that she wouldn’t support sending U.S. troops to Iran and accused Donald Trump of wanting Americans to “die for the price of oil.”
The Republican congresswoman, who is running for governor of South Carolina, made the news in a text message to Axios on Thursday morning.
The Independent has reached out to her office for further comment.
Mace told Axios that “War with Iran needs to end. President Trump has won the war, time to exit.”
“I’m not voting to send South Carolina’s sons and daughters into battle to die for the price of oil,” she added.
Mace’s statement to Axios marks another break from the Republican mainstream, which remains largely supportive of the president’s war with Iran. Her opposition to continuing the war comes as the House and Senate have been asked by the Pentagon to provide a $200bn package to fund ongoing military actions while Democrats are pushing efforts to restrict Trump’s warmaking through legal means.
Her opposition wasn’t a surprise after she abruptly left a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and complained to reporters that the administration wasn’t supplying Congress with sufficient rationalization for the deployment of ground troops or further U.S. resources in and around Iran.
“Just walked out of a House Armed Services briefing on Iran. Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing,” Mace tweeted on Wednesday.
Even with Mace’s support, the War Powers resolution offered by Democrats will still need more Republicans on board to matter. The Senate rejected an effort to advance the measure this week, with one Democrat and one Republican, John Fetterman and Rand Paul, respectively breaking ranks on the legislation and putting a final vote at 53-47 to defeat it. In the Senate, the legislation will need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster and could still be vetoed by Trump if it was passed by both chambers.
Such a rebuke by Congress would be rare and damaging for the White House. While it remains an unlikely possibility, lawmakers are much less certain of the prospects of the Pentagon’s supplemental budget request, which is already facing opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not endorse the bill’s chances of passage earlier this week when asked about it by CNN.
“It remains to be seen,” he said of whether it could pass. “And obviously we haven’t seen any of the specifics around it yet. Saw the aggregate number they’re proposing, but we’re going to need to, obviously take a look at it.”
At a Cabinet meeting on Thursday the president and his team repeated their insistences that the war in Iran was largely over, though Trump stressed to reporters that there were more military targets that U.S. forces would hit before the war concluded.
He also rejected a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming that he was “desperate” to end the war given the ongoing political consequences his Republican Party is suffering in polls as the conflict continues.
