Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) joined Thursday’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Newsmax to talk about how her support for the Iran war will halt if ground troops enter the mission. “Congress has questions,” Mace told Schmitt. “We deserve answers to those questions. And the military leaders we had in there yesterday couldn’t answer our questions about any of that. And so that’s where I think a lot of the frustration stems from the president, some of the president’s greatest supporters, strongest supporters, because we want him to continue to be successful.” “I would also like to ask you, in the last 70 years, can you point to one example where we bombed peace into an Islamic country?” Mace asked.

ROB SCHMITT, NEWSMAX HOST: Congresswoman Nancy Mace with us now. She has come out against the continuation of this operation in Iran, essentially if there are ground troops dropped into the country. It’s good to see you again. After a House Armed Services briefing, you posted on X, I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing. I know you can’t reveal a lot about what you saw in that briefing, but can you give us some sense of why you’ve turned this direction? REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): Well, I’ve never been for troops on the ground in Iran. And I will tell you, coming out of that meeting yesterday, and I was in a skiff, so I will not reveal the specifics, but I wasn’t the only one. You saw the chairman, Republican chairman, Mike Rogers of the House Armed Services Committee, can’t come out of that same briefing and demand that Congress deserved better and more answers. And I shared that sentiment. I am deeply concerned about what the next steps are now. Don’t get me wrong, President Trump is in a phenomenal job. He won. He’s winning. He won. He demolished the Iranian Navy. He’s demolished their missile capabilities. He’s demolished and destroyed their military defense mechanisms. I mean, he’s won everything that he said he would do. But I am concerned deeply about the Washington war machine getting their talons into the White House and prolonging this war into an endless war, to an endless operation, just as they did in Iraq, just as they did in Afghanistan. And I think that’s a real concern felt by MAGA, felt by Republicans, felt by people all across the country. We’re winning. We’ve won. And so what’s next? What happens after the last bomb falls? And I think we owe that answer that no — I just want to know what’s the exit strategy? SCHMITT: No, I understand that. And I also know the polling on ground troops is very, very low. But as I tried to allude to in the monologue, just because something’s unpopular doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary. I want to, you follow me here for a second. You clearly believe that Iran does pose a threat to the United States that needed to be dealt with. You followed the president there, right? MACE: Oh, a hundred percent. And Trump has been phenomenal. He’s done a fantastic job leading us in that direction and taking out Iran. SCHMITT: If at this point, though, I mean, as we just talked about with Blaine Holt, it’s the hornet’s nest thing. We’ve kicked over the hornet’s nest of a country that is suicidal in ideology and psychotic, jihadist, all of these bad things. If it’s determined that it takes some sort of limited ground operation and the president keeps saying he does not want this to go on for more than another couple of weeks, he’s pretty clear on that. If it takes that, why not do that to finish the job? Why would you be against finishing the job? Because you risk leaving Iran injured but not dead. MACE: The Pentagon should have briefed us on those plans yesterday and they did not. SCHMITT: They didn’t. MACE: That’s what I would say. Congress has questions. We deserve answers to those questions. And the military leaders we had in there yesterday couldn’t answer our questions about any of that. And so that’s where I think a lot of the frustration stems from the president, some of the president’s greatest supporters, strongest supporters, because we want him to continue to be successful. But I would also like to ask you, in the last 70 years, can you point to one example where we bombed peace into an Islamic country? We have never been able to bomb an Islamic country into peace. And so I think we really have to think outside the box here. We are very good at being the hammer when there are nails, but sometimes a screwdriver is needed. Maybe that’s Intel, maybe that’s Mossad, maybe that’s our special operations forces, not Marines, not 82nd. I think that is a valuable conversation to have. How are we going to do this? What are the plans? And then what’s our exit strategy? Because the men and women we send into war deserve an answer to that question.

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