South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace’s bathroom crusade is nothing more than a shallow stunt for attention, at least according to the lawmaker’s former communications director.
Mace has spent the majority of her week advancing a bill with the aim of banning one person from using toilets on Capitol Hill—Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress.
Hill alum Natalie Johnson torched her old boss for what she saw as a transparent media grab, posting on X that the attacks on McBride were little more than Mace’s “ploy to get on Fox.”
In response to a Mace team message that read, “I don’t want to see your junk in my bathroom,” Johnson said, “I don’t want to see your botched, cheap hooker-inspired boob job on my television. Can we introduce a bill to bar that?”
”Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson posted in a separate tweet.
The Republican communications strategist then argued that a real effort to protect women would involve preventing Matt Gaetz—who up until last week was being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct with a minor—from being confirmed as Donald Trump’s attorney general.
“‘Protecting women’ in Congress would be introducing a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again, rather than dropping a messaging bill that’s sole goal is getting on TV,” Johnson wrote.
The attention-seeking congresswoman openly acknowledged that the stunt was a direct attack on McBride, telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”
In another interview, Mace claimed that the mere thought of a trans woman walking into a women’s locker room “feels like assault.”
But the whole charade appears especially hollow in light of the fact that Mace and McBride both have private bathrooms in their offices. The only people that the bill will actually hurt will be the nonelected trans employees of the U.S. Capitol complex, who apparently have—until now—been using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity with no issue.
