“Proud transphobe” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is running for governor of South Carolina on a campaign that focuses heavily on her opposition to trans rights. Now she’s claiming that the person who shot rightwing political operative Charlie Kirk – who has not been identified or apprehended – is transgender, using an anti-trans slur to describe this person.

She then claimed that the shooting made her afraid for her life due to her anti-trans advocacy.

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“It sounds like the shooter was a tr***y,” Mace told reporters yesterday. “Or pro-tr***y.”

“And just because I wanna protect women that I’m worried about getting murdered? Are you f**king kidding me?” she continued. “This is outta control and enough is enough.”

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“I’m gonna be louder than I’ve ever been until this s**t stops.”

On Wednesday, Turning Point America founder Charlie Kirk was shot to death at a public speaking event at Utah Valley University in Provo. Kirk was a prominent rightwing activist and podcaster known for his extreme statements, like that Jewish people control “not just the colleges; it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it,” that “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” and that being gay is an “error” that needs to be “correct[ed].” Just before his death, he was embroiled in controversy for saying that Taylor Swift to submit to her future husband because “You are not in charge.”

Conservatives have, for the past several years, been blaming gun violence tragedies on transgender people, generally before any facts about such shootings are known and sometimes even after it’s known that the shooters were not transgender. In fact, Kirk died while debating how much trans people should be blamed for mass shootings despite the fact that the vast majority are perpetrated by cisgender men.

A report in the conservative Wall Street Journal yesterday – which the newspaper cast doubt on in a later article – said that the shooter’s bullets or weapon had “expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology” engraved on them. That online rumor was started by rightwing podcast host Steven Crowder, who said he had obtained a leaked report from an ATF official. While it’s unclear what it even means for “trans ideology” to be engraved on bullets or a weapon, this may have been what Mace was referring to.

A New York Times report said that another law enforcement official “with direct knowledge of the investigation” said that Crowder’s report had not been verified and didn’t correspond to other information gathered in the investigation.

Mace has a history of using anti-trans slurs on social media, at campaign events, and at the Capitol.

No suspect has been arrested in the shooting, but law enforcement officials have released images of a person of interest in the case.

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