Controversial MAGA lawmaker Nancy Mace is asking President Trump to remove Sen. Lindsey Graham from the Situation Room as the war in Iran rages on.
Mace claimed that her fellow Republican "brags about" advising the president on his aggressive war strategy.
Graham spoke to Trump at the White House and also visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel several times in recent months – reportedly to make the case for war against Iran, even coaching Netanyahu on how to lobby Trump for the war.
On Wednesday, Mace was interviewed on CNN, where she responded to a clip of Graham urging Trump to seize Iran’s Kharg Island, the country's primary oil hub.
In the clip, Graham told Fox News: “So here’s what I’d tell President Trump. Keep it up for a few more weeks. Take Kharg Island – where [there are] all of the resources they have to produce oil – control that island. Let this regime die on a vine… We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.”
Mace said, “Seven thousand Marines died on the black sands of Iwo Jima,” adding, “I want President Trump to take Lindsey Graham out of the situation room."
Host Laura Coates then asked her: “Is he advising the president?”
“He brags about it,” Mace responded. “And I don’t think Lindsey Graham, for all of that hubris, has thought through or wargamed the consequences of us taking Kharg Island.”
Trump has faced pushback from prominent members of his MAGA base for the war, including from media personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
On Wednesday, Mace stormed out of a House Armed Services hearing and claimed Washington’s “war machine” is trying to put boots on the ground in Iran.
The South Carolina Republican also took to social media to rage against President Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East, which is now in its fourth week of conflict.
“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,” she wrote on X.
Mace compared the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, which began more than three weeks ago, with the Iraq War. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011.
“Washington’s war machine is hard at work. They are try to drag us into Iran to make it another Iraq. We can’t let them,” she wrote.
Trump had campaigned during the 2024 election on an “America First” platform, which typically means putting the interests of Americans ahead of foreign affairs.
During his election victory speech, Trump said, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Mace claimed lawmakers were given different reasons for the war than were publicly announced.
“The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee.
“This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people,” the congresswoman wrote on X.
Trump has claimed Iran posed an “imminent” threat to Americans due to its “nuclear ambitions” and development of long-range missiles. But his former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who resigned over the war, claimed Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the U.S.
A recent The Economist/YouGov poll found just 33 percent of Americans believe the war is justified, and 47 percent believe it is not.
The Pentagon has already ordered about 2,000 troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to begin moving to the Middle East to help with the war, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing defense officials.
It’s unclear where the paratroopers will go in the region.
The deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division is in addition to the thousands of Marines traveling to the Middle East.
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