Nancy Mace’s hot summer

South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace has been floated as a potential vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. If her remarks at a prayer breakfast this week are anything to go by, she’d be a great fit, as she shares the Donald’s knack for scandalizing evangelicals.

“I woke up this morning at 7,” Mace told the group Thursday morning. “Patrick, my fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed and I was like, ‘No baby, we don’t got time for that this morning. I gotta get to the prayer breakfast, and I gotta be on time.’”

An online furore followed, with some puritans pearl-clutching over the fact that Mace, a divorcée, was bragging about having premarital sex. “I go to church because I’m a sinner not because I’m a saint! Glad those in attendance, including @SenatorTimScott and our pastor, took this joke in stride,” she tweeted in her defense. “My fiancé is not upset but he did suggest I go to church twice this Sunday. See y’all at the 8:30 and the 11:30!”

Cockburn, however, is grateful to Mace for ushering in DC’s summer of love. Hopefully the reading on Sunday is from the Song of Songs…

Young money

Could the big winner from Ron DeSantis’s skittish campaign culling prove to be Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin? Over at Puck, Tara Palmeri reports that a number of the GOP donor class are looking to “coalesce around one candidate other than Trump” and that if DeSantis continues to nose-dive, they want Youngkin.

Former DeSantis donor Thomas Peterffy is “considering wiring another $1 million to Youngkin’s super PAC”; Karl Rove has “spent many hours trying to persuade Youngkin to run”, and, perhaps most significantly, Rupert Murdoch has “preferred Youngkin” since meeting both him and DeSantis at his Montana ranch earlier in the year.

Questions remain over whether Youngkin has the stomach to face down Trump, or whether he’d prefer to keep his powder dry for a 2028 run. Watch this space…

Candace’s anti-trafficking crusade

February 2020: Tim Ballard joins Candace Owens on her podcast to discuss the scourge of human trafficking.

January 2023: “I do not believe that Andrew Tate is a rapist. I don’t. I think that that is what people like to accuse men of when they’re trying to take them down, right?”: Candace Owens on the same podcast.

Today: Owens follows Tucker Carlson’s example and hosts Tate, an accused rapist and human trafficker, on her podcast.

break up with your wife, i’m bored

Ariana Grande has taken Hollywood-style drama to the sleepy streets of London, after she separated from her husband and began dating her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater. The problem for the lovebirds is that Ethan’s estranged wife, Lilly Jay, is not on board with the romance.

Talking to Page Six, Jay said that her family is “collateral damage, adding that “Ariana’s the story really. Not a girl’s girl.” According to one source, “Ariana met their [1-year-old] baby and even held him. They had dinners together in London — and Ariana told Lilly that she wanted to have a baby one day and that she couldn’t wait to start a family.” The whole mess shines a whole new light on Ari’s song “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.”

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