Nancy Mace has officially stepped into the feud between Riley Gaines and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—and she didn’t come quietly. In what many are already calling the political equivalent of a knockout punch, Mace resurfaced old tweets from AOC’s past and used them to turn the tables in devastating fashion.
It couldn’t be happening at a more chaotic moment. The government has been shut down for nearly a month, yet most Americans barely seem to notice. Sports are electric, Halloween is landing on a Friday, and conservatives on social media are rallying behind a new tag-team moment: Riley Gaines and Nancy Mace vs. AOC.
The feud began when Gaines challenged AOC to a live debate on capitalism versus socialism. Gaines has been outspoken about socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani—whom AOC is supporting in the New York mayoral race—and called on the congresswoman to publicly defend her ideology. Rather than accept the challenge, AOC fired back with a dismissive remark, saying she would first like to see Riley “get a real job.”
Gaines immediately pushed back, doubling down on her challenge and ridiculing AOC’s response as an evasion of actual policy discussion. That’s when Nancy Mace jumped into the fray.
Mace dug up years-old tweets in which AOC made sexual and provocative comments, then used those posts to highlight what she characterized as AOC’s hypocrisy and unseriousness. The implication was clear: for all her grandstanding and moral lectures, AOC once used social media in the very ways she now condemns others for.
The clash has now evolved from a two-way dispute into a broader cultural showdown—pitting two conservative women, one an elite athlete and the other a sitting member of Congress, against one of the Democratic Party’s biggest national figures.
And as it stands, the momentum is not on AOC’s side.
With the government idling in shutdown limbo and President Trump traveling overseas to meet world leaders, these political battles are unfolding in real time online—and this latest exchange has become a symbol of the growing backlash to what many see as the left’s double standards.
Nancy Mace has made it clear: she’s not just watching from the sidelines—she’s in the fight.