South Carolina GOP erupts in civil war as 'true MAGA supporters' seek censure of state party chair for calling them 'lepers'

Far-right supporters of former president Donald Trump in South Carolina are seeking to censure the state Republican Party chairman, after he compared them to a "leper colony" in a recent newspaper interview.

FITSNews reported Monday that GOP officials in at least four South Carolina counties are mulling censure resolutions against state party chair Drew McKissick, who defeated Trump attorney and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood to win the post earlier this year.

According to FITSnews, the censure resolutions are "the latest front in an increasingly caustic civil war within the party."

Last week, three top officials from the Greenville County Republican Party abruptly resigned, in response to a campaign by pro-Trump activists that allegedly involved "intimidation, threats, bullying, disenfranchisement and character assassination," according to the Post and Courier newspaper.

In the wake of the resignations, McKissick called the tactics of the far-right activists — who have created their own grassroots group called mySCGOP.com — "absolutely insane."

"They have essentially preyed on Trump supporters, telling them the county and state party organizations didn't support President Trump, which is a total lie, and then they've gone forward spreading rumors and innuendos about people — everything from sex trafficking to embezzlement to rigging elections, all this garbage," McKissick said, warning that the Greenville County GOP could "fall into a state of disrepair, become a complete dumpster fire and essentially be a leper colony for the next year and a half."

Pressley Stutts, a longtime Tea Party leader who led the campaign to get the Greenville GOP officials to resign, responded by saying: "We are following the advice of President Trump, who encouraged all of the MAGA supporters to go out, get involved and take over the parties with their true MAGA supporters. That's what we did."

According to the draft of a proposed censure resolution targeting McKissick, he "has publicly insulted and disenfranchised Republicans within the Greenville GOP, and by proxy others within the (state Republican Party)."

The Horry County GOP was scheduled to be the first to take up the censure resolution against McKissick on Monday. Republicans in Horry County recently elected Tracey Beanz, who's been credited with pushing the QAnon conspiracy theory movement into the mainstream, to the state GOP's executive committee.