The social media hype around Republican Rep. Nancy Mace? It’s largely created by bots.
WIRED reported Wednesday that the South Carolina congresswoman couldn’t figure out how to grow her own online fanbase, and so she forced staff members to make fake accounts to bolster her image.
“I would say [it was] at least a weekly comment, if not daily,” one of several former Mace staffers told WIRED.
Mace, a self-proclaimed coder, demanded her minions make multiple burner accounts and reply to critical comments, even to say things that weren’t true. The accounts were made on a variety of social media platforms, including Reddit, to monitor what people were saying about her.
“We were congressional staff, and there were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents,” a former staffer told WIRED. But instead of studying South Carolina policy, they were familiarizing themselves with any complaints about Mace, who also serves as chair of the House subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Information.
Several staffers have questioned her expertise, with one admitting: “I never saw her coding s–t. Ever.”
Sydney Long, Mace’s communications director, said it would be “a slap in the face to taxpayers” for her to spend time commenting on her boss’ personal life. “The only relationship the Congresswoman cares about is her one with South Carolina,” she told WIRED. “She is married to her job and that is all the media should care about.”
Wesley Donehue, whose firm did consulting work for Mace’s 2022 and 2024 reelection campaigns before later firing her as a client, first hinted at Mace’s strange marketing in a 2023 deposition.
“You need to know that Nancy Mace is quite the—when I use the word ‘nerd’ or ‘geek,’ it’s always favorable, but a computer nerd or a computer geek,” Donehue said at the time. “She programs her own bots. She sets up Twitter burner accounts. This is kind of a thing she does. She sits all night on the couch and programs bots, because she’s very, very computer savvy. She controls her own voter database, she programs a lot of her own website, she programs Facebook bots and Instagram bots and Twitter bots. It’s what she does for fun.”
He later admitted on X that he stopped working with her because “I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bulls–t and drama in my life.”
Mace has faced some serious controversies during her time on Capitol Hill. The once “never Trumper” has cozied up to the president in recent years and has used her newfound leverage to play a large role on technology policy.
She’s also been sidetracked by some truly bizarre personal mayhem, including when she took a moment during a House subcommittee hearing on surveillance to slam her ex-fiancé by showing a nude photo of herself to the rest of the room that she said was taken without her consent. There, she renewed allegations of sexual abuse against her ex, Patrick Bryant, and multiple other men. All of them have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Along with the naked silhouette she showed, Mace presented a series of censored images of other women, which she claimed were pulled from recordings belonging to her ex. She sued one of the other accused men in state court in early May, claiming he “repeatedly and maliciously defamed” her on social media.
It seems like her former staffers’ burner accounts couldn’t respond to everything.
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