Hillary Clinton's Fiery Clash With Nancy Mace Won't Help Mace's Dismal Reputation

With decades of experience in politics, Hillary Clinton has honed her skills and knows how to deal with questions. In 2015, Clinton famously sat through an 11-hour hearing where members of the Republican Party worked tirelessly to fluster the former secretary of state and U.S. senator to no avail. More than a decade later, in 2026, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who is in desperate need of improving her reputation, tried to do the same thing during a more than four-hour closed-door deposition on Clinton's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Things heated up, ending with Clinton brutally taking Mace down a peg. And while Lauren Boebert's blunder during the deposition has garnered the most attention, that wasn't the only intense moment.

Things turned ugly when Mace asked Clinton about her association with Donald Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick. As the released video shows, Clinton begins to explain that her connection to Lutnick comes from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Clinton was a senator at the time, and Lutnick's firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was located in one of the towers. According to Clinton, it lost roughly 650 people on that day. 

Mace begins to interrupt Clinton, stating, "I know that," leading to Clinton getting visibly annoyed and responding, "You asked the question, I'm going to answer your question." The two go back and forth, with Mace suggesting that Clinton was connected to Epstein via an email sent by Lutnick that discussed a Clinton campaign event. Clinton, who consistently tries to answer Mace's question as Mace continues to cut her off, eventually is able to say she knows Lutnick because she worked to help him and the deceased employees' families recover after the attack. 

Mace isn't running for another term in Congress, but has entered the race to be governor of South Carolina. And while Nancy Mace released an internal poll that puts her in the lead, there are some warning signs. The poll shows her with a high unfavorability rating, coming in with 10% more of those surveyed unfavorable than favorable. And Mace's own embarrassing actions in Congress may be harming her chances. 

In October 2025, the congresswoman made news by allegedly yelling at police and TSA agents at the Charleston International Airport when she attempted to go through an entrance designated for crew personnel. According to the police report (via NBC News), Mace called officers and agents "incompetent" and that they were mistreating a "f***ing U.S. representative." 

Then 2026 started off with a number of Nancy Mace's former staffers speaking out against her. According to them, Mace drinks and uses marijuana excessively, and has members of her staff clean her home rather than hire a housekeeping service. And there's another controversy surrounding her living arrangements: a House Ethics investigation into Mace for potentially claiming more than $9,000 in excess housing reimbursements.

Mace also used the U.S. bombing of Iran to attack fellow members of Congress on X after it was announced that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, had been killed. "My heart goes out to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib tonight," she wrote above a photo of Khamenei. "Sending thoughts and prayers." Omar, never one to back away from a fight, responded: "Please restrain from drinking too much as you have been warned from your staff and stay off social media when you are drunk."