President Donald Trump threw his weight behind South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in the state's crowded Republican gubernatorial primary, endorsing her just days before the June 9 vote, and dealing a pointed blow to Rep. Nancy Mace, who broke with the president last year over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Trump posted his endorsement on Truth Social Friday, calling Evette "an America First Patriot who has been with me from the very beginning." He praised her loyalty during his 2024 presidential campaign and noted she was the only gubernatorial candidate in the state to back him as soon as he launched his bid.
The endorsement lands squarely on Mace without naming her. It marks the latest move by the president against Republican lawmakers who signed onto a Democrat-backed discharge petition in the summer of 2025 to force a House vote on releasing unredacted Epstein documents. Mace was one of the original four GOP signatories, and the political consequences for all four have been severe.
Mace didn't just sign the discharge petition. She led a March 2026 House Oversight Committee push to compel then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify before Congress about the Justice Department's handling of the files. She has cast herself as a champion of transparency on Epstein's sex crimes against children, invoking her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault.
Her response to Trump's endorsement of Evette leaned into that framing. In a statement posted on her campaign website, Mace said she has "enormous respect for President Trump and everything he has done for our country and for South Carolina," calling that respect "genuine" and "unchanged."
But she acknowledged the cost of her stance:
"I also know I put the likelihood of an endorsement on the line when I demanded transparency on the Epstein files. I demanded it because you deserved the truth, ALL OF IT, and as a survivor, I had to get justice for these women. If this is the price of an endorsement, I will never pay it."
The timing carried its own sting. Hours before Trump issued the endorsement, Mace had posted on X insisting that Evette was "NOT ENDORSED by DONALD TRUMP" and urging voters not to "believe her LIES." That post remained live as of late Saturday morning, overtaken by events.
Trump has now endorsed against or threatened to endorse against every Republican who signed onto the Epstein discharge petition. The results, so far, tell the story.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who co-led the petition effort, lost his May 19 primary to Trump-backed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein by nearly 10 points. That race became the most expensive House nomination contest in American history. Massie and Trump had clashed not only over the Epstein files but also over the Iran war and the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, another signatory, resigned from Congress in November 2025, one week after Trump withdrew his support and vowed to back a primary challenger against her.
And Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, the fourth signer, drew a threat from Trump in mid-May to back a primary challenger after she campaigned for Massie against Gallrein in Kentucky.
The pattern is unmistakable. Crossing the president on the Epstein petition carried a political price tag, regardless of the fact that Trump himself eventually reversed course on the issue.
That reversal is worth pausing on. In November 2025, after initially opposing the discharge petition, Trump called on House Republicans to release the Epstein files, writing that "we have nothing to hide, and it's time to move on from this Democrat Hoax." Days later, he signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act ordering the documents' release after the bill passed Congress by a near-unanimous margin.
The files ultimately came out. The bill became law. Yet the lawmakers who forced the issue before Trump came around are still paying for the act of defiance itself. What matters, evidently, is not just where you end up, but whether you got there by going around the president first.
The Republican gubernatorial primary on June 9 features a deep bench. Evette, Mace, Attorney General Alan Wilson, businessman Rom Reddy, and Rep. Ralph Norman are all competing to succeed Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited after taking office in 2017.
A Trafalgar Group poll conducted May 21, 24, before Trump's endorsement, showed Evette narrowly leading with 19.9% support. Wilson trailed at 19.4%, Reddy at 19.0%, Norman at 15.9%, and Mace in a surprising fifth place at 14.6%. In a field that tight, Trump's endorsement could prove decisive.
Evette already had the backing of McMaster, who endorsed her in February. Trump noted in his post that Evette might select the governor's son, Henry McMaster Jr., as her running mate, calling it "A BIG added plus for Pam."
Norman, meanwhile, carries an endorsement from former Gov. Nikki Haley, who backed the congressman who had supported her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid. Whether Haley's name helps or hurts in a Trump-dominated primary is its own question.
If Evette wins, she would become South Carolina's second female governor and its first Catholic governor.
Mace entered the race as a national figure, a combative, media-savvy congresswoman with a knack for making headlines. Her Epstein transparency push won praise from transparency advocates and some bipartisan support. She framed it as a moral imperative, rooted in her own experience as a survivor.
But in a Republican primary in South Carolina, with Trump's endorsement on the other side of the ledger, moral framing only goes so far. The Trafalgar numbers already showed her trailing the field before the endorsement landed. Trump's backing of Evette could widen that gap considerably.
Trump's endorsement post did not mention Mace by name or reference the Epstein dispute. He didn't need to. The message was clear enough: loyalty is remembered, and so is defiance.
Mace's campaign referred reporters to her public statement and offered no additional comment.
Several questions hang over the final stretch of this race. Can Evette consolidate the Trump-McMaster lane quickly enough to break away from Wilson and Reddy in a field where the top four candidates were separated by just five points? Will Mace's fifth-place standing hold, or does the Trump endorsement push her lower? And does Boebert face a formal primary challenge next, completing the pattern?
The June 9 primary will answer some of those questions. For now, the South Carolina governor's race has become the latest test of a straightforward proposition in Republican politics: cross the president, and the bill comes due, even if he later agrees with you.
In today's GOP, being right early counts for less than being loyal on time.
