(CNN) On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump called South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace an "absolutely terrible candidate" and someone "whose remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party to which she has been very disloyal."
On Thursday, Mace filmed a video outside of Trump Tower in New York City, in which she remind people that she was one of Trump's "earliest supporters," worked for his 2016 campaign and endorsed him in the 2020 race "because of policies I believed in."
Watch this:
Awkward, right?
And yet, in this moment in the Republican Party, utterly predictable. There is no Republican Party outside of Trump. And so, when the former President endorses your primary opponent -- as Trump did on Wednesday in throwing his support behind Katie Arrington -- you have to do absolutely everything you can to soften the blow.
Like going to New York and standing outside of Trump Tower while reeling off your pro-Trump credentials. Just, you know, to cite one example. At random.
For Mace, this is simply the latest example of her backtracking on the former President.
"His entire legacy was wiped out yesterday," Mace said of Trump in a CNN interview the day after the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. In a subsequent interview with Fox later that month, Mace expanded on her critique of Trump, saying in part:
"I don't know how you go forward and defend the indefensible. ... People violently attacked the halls of Congress, our United States Capitol. I believe that every accomplishment that Republicans and the President had, and I was a big supporter of the President over the last four years ... but I believe that those accomplishments were wiped out."
But as the days wore on and it became increasingly clear that January 6 was not regarded by the party as disqualifying for Trump, Mace started to shift.
She wasn't one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over that fateful day.
She also voted with the House GOP majority in kicking Rep. Liz Cheney out of party leadership for the Wyoming Republican's outspoken opposition to Trump in the aftermath of January 6.
And Mace didn't join with the 35 Republicans who voted in support of the creation of an independent commission to study January 6. (The measure passed the House, but died in the Senate due to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's opposition.)
As the New York Times wrote of Mace in July:
"Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump's corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to 'stop fighting with each other in public.'"
This is all in support of trying to save her political career. While Trump carried Mace's Charleston-area 1st Congressional District by just six points in 2020, the average Republican primary voter in the district is still strongly supportive of the former President. And that means that being seen as a Trump antagonist is a sure-fire way to lose the GOP nomination.
Unfortunately for Mace, Trump hasn't forgiven or forgotten. (He never does!) And so, no matter how many videos she shoots outside of Trump Tower, it seems unlikely she's going to sneak back into the Trump fold. Which is big trouble for her political future.