The man who got into a vicious argument with Rep. Nancy Mace in a skincare aisle has given his side of the story, saying the congresswoman is “playing the victim card” after her “meltdown.”
The voter, now identified as Ely Murray-Quick, had a viral run-in with the South Carolina Republican in an Ulta Beauty store in Charleston on Saturday.
Mace posted a video on X afterwards, saying that she was accosted by an “unhinged lunatic” wearing “daisy dukes at a makeup store.” Her clip has been viewed over seven million times.
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However, Murray-Quick, 32, has now responded, and claimed he was simply asking Mace if she would be holding more town halls this year.
Appearing on Laura Coates Live on CNN Monday night, he told the host he was “expecting a proper response, a response that you would expect of elected representatives from our state. Maybe even a schedule.”
What he got, however, was a profane rebuke. Mace “decided to tell me to f--- myself,” the real estate company owner had earlier told LGBTQ news site The Advocate.
He also rebuffed the Trump acolyte’s assertion that he was “aggressive” and “in her face,” saying that he was at least eight feet away from her at all times.
“Nancy Mace likes to play the victim card, but that’s not what happened here,” he told Coates. “I asked a simple question as a resident of the state of South Carolina and she couldn’t she couldn’t answer it. She couldn’t meet the demand of the people.”
He added in his interview with The Advocate: “I think it speaks a lot to her character that this is the type of language she decides to use to someone who is in the same space as her who asked her a simple question.”
Mace, who has been vocal about suffering abuse in the past, stood by her story on Fox News earlier on Monday evening. She told Sean Hannity that her brush with Murray-Quick is the third encounter with a constituent to rattle her in recent weeks.
“This guy approached me and I will tell you I felt threatened and harassed,” Mace said on Fox News.
“And as someone who’s experienced trauma in her life—and a lot of women will understand what I’m talking about—when some guy gets in your face and approaches you in an aggressive manner that he did, and you feel like you are in danger, instinctively, as women who have been through trauma and survived domestic abuse, you have two options
“You can fight or flee and I’m a fighter. I’ve never stood back down from a fight.”
However, Murray-Quick said there was “no aggression.” He told The Advocate: “I was appropriately six to eight, maybe even 10 feet away at all times. There was no physical confrontation. There was no aggression. She wasn’t locked in the aisle. She was free to leave and not answer my question if she had chosen to.”
CNN also aired Murray-Quick’s own video of the fiery interaction, which shows him calmly approaching Mace—and never “in her face” as she claims.
The conversation, however, did quickly devolve into a swearing match. At the beginning, Murray-Quick politely asked Mace when she will next hold a town hall.
Mace said that she’s done “dozens” of town halls, but Murray-Quick then demanded to know when her next one will be. At that point, Mace suddenly began to accuse the man of “harassing” her and her tone changed noticeably as she pulled out her own phone and started to record him.
Responding to this, a spokesperson for Mace said that “if you harass a Congresswoman in public while wearing daisy dukes, maybe you’re the problem.”
The statement went on: “The Congresswoman has every right to stand up for herself when she’s being harassed.”
At one point during the viral confrontation, Mace randomly asserted: “And by the way, I voted for gay marriage twice.”
Murray-Quick, who did allude to being a member of the gay community in his conversation with Laura Coates, was visibly taken aback.
“What does that have to do with me?” he asked.
“I’m just saying. It has everything to do with you,” Mace responded.
Murray-Quick responded: “You think everything about me has to do with gay marriage?”
“I do,” she replied as Murray-Quick questioned: “That’s your first stance when you speak with me? There’s no other humane conversation you can have about me?”
The Advocate called this comment, and her obsession with Murray-Quick’s “daisy dukes” a revealing snapshot of Mace’s “behavior toward LGBTQ+ constituents.”
“There is no other humane thing you can talk about me then say, ‘Oh, I support gay marriage’?” an irate Murray-Quick said during their confrontation.
Mace then claimed to have hosted a dozen town halls last year, and said Murray-Quick could have attended. He said he was asking about this year.
Mace then went on a MAGA-style rant about the left. “Because you people on the left are crazy. You’re absolutely f---ing crazy,” she told Murray-Quick.
The encounter ended with the man calling Mace “a nasty b----” and walking away as they trade barbs. Mace then attacked him on X, writing that an “unhinged lunatic, a man, wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store” confronted her.
An account created in Murray-Quick’s name this month responded to another of Mace’s posts. “I asked for a town hall, you threw a tantrum in Ulta,” the reply read. “If my daisy dukes rattled you that much, maybe public office just isn’t in your size.”
Mace, meanwhile, has come under fire for skipping out on a town hall held by the Lowcountry Accountability Alliance in South Carolina in March, claiming that it was “driven by left-wing extremists and paid agitators with a clear agenda.”
