Nancy Mace’s defence of Trump sparks jeers from Daily Show audience

South Carolina Republican faces mockery from studio audience as she pushes unsubstantiated claims about Biden family

Rep Nancy Mace faced the scorn of the Daily Show audience after host Charlamagne tha God asked if she believed the mounting evidence against former President Donald Trump following the four criminal indictments against him handed down this year.

“Which evidence?” she asked on Monday, prompting laughter and jeers from the studio audience. “Which indictment, which one?”

The host was asking about the Georgia election interference case in which multiple former Trump lawyers have pleaded guilty.

The South Carolina Republican said she hadn’t “seen the evidence yet”.

“Again, I do a lot of civil rights work, and everyone is allowed due process under the law and if they’re found guilty, they take responsibility for that. But I haven’t seen evidence to show that he’s guilty of that,” she said.

“There are a lot of people around him that did a lot of things,” she added.

Ms Mace faced additional laughter from the audience when she was asked if she believed investigating President Joe Biden was a good use of Congress’s time.

“Well, corruption is a real problem in this country, and I have seen bank accounts … of the president’s grandchildren with money directly from communist China,” she claimed.

Republicans have been unable to back up their claims against Mr Biden and his family and even some members of the GOP have admitted that the initial impeachment hearing into the president was an unmitigated disaster for the Republicans.

Ms Mace claimed to have seen damning evidence against the president, adding that she wants it to be made public.

“That should not be happening in our country, and it should be exposed for every … American to see and then decide whether or not that’s okay,” she said during her appearance on the Comedy Central programme. “Whether there’s an impeachment or not, I want people to see the evidence that I’ve seen and make a decision for themselves.”

Ms Mace was asked if the impeachment proceedings into Mr Biden are political revenge for the two impeachments of Mr Trump, as he has suggested.

“What we should do is follow the facts, follow the truth and then come to a decision at the right time once we’ve had due process, once we’ve shown evidence whether or not an impeachment is warranted. That’s what the American people want,” she said.

“That’s what they deserve, and that’s what we should do,” she added.

Ms Mace told The Hill in a statement that Mr Biden had been on the receiving end of “mind-boggling amounts of money”.

“We’re not going to stop until 100 per cent of Americans know the truth and know what happened with the Biden family and the amount and level of corruption,” she added. “This will be one of the most corrupt presidencies in United States history when we are done with it, and we shouldn’t stop until every single American knows what happened.”