South Carolina

“Actually, yes, please, I would like the pastrami corned-beef hash on the side – extra brown, extra peppers. Perfect complement to my Prime Benny. May want to hold the cheesy grits, though, but I’d love a side of maple and a large strawberry shake. Man needs his fruit!” “Whip cream?” “Oh, I think, absolutely.” It wasn’t a novel conversation. I used to entertain similar, equally weighty questions at least three times a week here. But I do recall thinking, then, and many times previously: if one is scarfing a monster shake at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning, is whipped cream really your most likely coronary catalyst? (Always skip the cherry; nothing found in nature – even adjacent to nature – can achieve such brilliant degrees of radiation red.

“Trump in high heels” is how Congresswoman Nancy Mace described herself earlier this week when she announced her candidacy for governor of her home state, South Carolina. We don’t know whether Trump in high heels already exists because we still haven’t seen the Epstein Files. But let’s not assume the worst, and let’s examine Mace’s claim at face value. Does she really have Trumpian qualities?  Like Trump, Mace has some idiosyncratic political views, while also going hard in the paint with the antiwoke rhetoric that has helped restore the Republicans to national dominance. Mace was the first female Corps of Cadets graduate from the military college The Citadel, where her father was on the faculty, and published a memoir about the experience in 2001.

Charleston, South Carolina Welcome to Thunderdome, where the past three days in South Carolina have felt bizarre, for several reasons. A dominant incumbent is facing his solo challenger without any interest in demolishing her efforts in the primary contest. The atmosphere at Donald Trump’s Greenville town hall was one of grim resolve, far from the enthusiasms of 2020. And for the upstart Nikki Haley campaign, her events have been popular and packed with fans, but all operating from an assumption that she will inevitably lose. This is an incredibly odd election — where South Carolina was decisive in 2020, 2016 and 2008, now it feels like an afterthought.

Welcome to Thunderdome, fresh from New Hampshire, tired as all get-out and ready to rumble on to South Carolina and its welcoming warmth and palmetto-framed cobblestone streets, as opposed to the watery coffee and stained fingers of the Northeast. The strangest thing seems to be happening, though: with Nikki Haley’s insistence on staying in the race, and the apparent flood of donations she’s received since overperforming against Donald Trump, the people around the former president are taking on a newly aggressive tone — even to the point of trying to anoint him the nominee before anyone else votes!

Welcome to Thunderdome, where fresh off his thirty-point win in Iowa, former president Donald Trump is now counting on New Hampshire to deliver the killing blow to the nascent Nikki Haley boomlet. Haley underperformed polling expectations in Iowa — in part because of the frigid weather, which saw the lowest turnout in a quarter century for the caucuses. New Hampshire now takes on new importance for her, keeping the narrative going that she’s the better, stronger choice for a showdown with her former boss. With the backing of Republican governor Chris Sununu, an influx of cash from the donor class and a DeSantis campaign that is largely focused southward, Haley will have her best shot at pulling out an unlikely upset.

South Carolina Tim Scott is set to announce his bid for the presidency as soon as this week, Cockburn has heard from three sources. Scott has been doing the pre-announcement ritual of touring early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire — as well as his home state of South Carolina. Per one of Cockburn's sources, Scott will announce at an event in South Carolina. No surprises there. Scott is set to throw his hat in the ring after former president Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, and as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, thought to be the party’s top alternative to Trump, falters in the polls. DeSantis himself is also yet to announce.

If you want to be a prominent member of Congress in this day and age, the surest path is to become a hype machine for the ideological extremes of your party. Yet Nancy Mace gives no signs of responding to these tabloid incentives in conversation with her constituents. It’s an odd thing to say about a politician in 2023, but you might even find yourself taking her seriously. In a Washington where the House of Representatives is dominated by GOP would-be pundits, including bomb-throwers such as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, the second-term Republican from South Carolina’s 1st district sounds like a politician from a different era.

The murder trial of prominent South Carolina patriarch Alex Murdaugh has it all: two deaths, a lethal drunken boat accident, a suicide-for-hire plot, the mysterious death of the family's housekeeper and a suspicious hit-and-run. That's why the case has caught the attention of true crime fanatics and the national media — ABC News, Discovery, HBO, CNN and Netflix have all taken a stab at various documentaries and podcasts. Others still might find themselves lost in the schadenfreude of watching a powerful and wealthy family descend into tragedy. The Murdaugh family has long exercised a significant amount of legal influence in the Low Country region of South Carolina.

Manchester, New Hampshire Sorry fellas: GOP girlboss Nikki Haley is going to be the next president. At least according to former New Hampshire candidate for Senate Don Bolduc, who knows a thing or two about calling elections. Bolduc introduced Haley at two New Hampshire town halls in the week she entered the 2024 Republican primary. The second was held Friday at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, a regular stop for candidates visiting the early primary state. The packed room was treated to a soundtrack of late-boomer classics from Blondie, Tom Petty and the Detroit Spinners. On her way in, Haley stopped by the overspill area in the foyer to thank the surplus guests for coming. "Next time we'll have a bigger room," the candidate promised.

It was a beautiful moment of bipartisan unity when, left and right, American and European, young and old, united to call Lindsey Graham a moron. The South Carolina senator made headlines Thursday night after appearing on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox. He openly called for Vladimir Putin to be assassinated: How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate. Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there more successful Col. Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out! You would be doing your country a great service and the world a great service. Graham doubled down on his insanely dangerous comments on Twitter right after. Best to put this kind of stupidity in writing, in case there was any confusion.