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Rep. Nancy Mace got yet another platform to play the phony victim card for being asked why, as a rape victim, she’s supporting sexual assaulter Donald Trump.
I wrote a few weeks ago about Rep. Nancy Mace's phony victimhood card that she pulled when ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked her how she “square[s]” her endorsement of Trump when “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming a victim of that rape [E. Jean Carroll]".
Mace (R-SC) has spoken openly about being a rape survivor and how that has informed her policy decisions. Yet she threw a self-serving temper tantrum when Stephanopoulos asked her a perfectly fair question. She accused him of “rape shaming” her (even though he had praised her courage for going public with her ordeal). Even worse, she used the occasion to shame E. Jean Carroll, the victim of Trump's sexual abuse. Mace also insisted Carroll had not been raped, even though the judge wrote that though Carroll's assault had not met the legal, “penal code” definition of rape, she had been raped that “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ”
If none of that, along with the 25 other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct and assault, is good enough proof that the guy Mace endorsed is a sexual predator, we have him on video boasting about grabbing women by the p***y.
It was not a surprise that Trump-worshiping Harris Faulkner was all in on Mace's victimhood grift. But it was slightly surprising that Howard Kurtz, a long-time media analyst for The Washington Post, CNN and The Daily Beast, had sold his soul to such an extent. Especially since his face seemed to convey skepticism with Mace.
However, it was a bad omen that in the earlier part of the interview, Kurtz described the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which Mace supported, as based “in part because he couldn't get government spending under control.”
FACT CHECK: It was a lot about McCarthy making sure the economy didn't tank by agreeing to pay our bills. It was also about McCarthy committing the MAGA/partisan sin of working with Democrats to do so.
Despite current Speaker Mike Johnson's work to keep the government open, Mace does not support ousting him. She said that while she doesn't agree with him on every issue, she said she supports him because “he's as honest as they come. I like to call him 'Honest Abe.'”
She also attacked her Republican colleagues who have left Congress in the middle of their term. “I am absolutely disappointed with my colleagues who are quitting on Congress. When you swore an oath to the Constitution and were sworn into office, you committed to your term which is two years." She blamed McCarthy for having “started this trend.” She added that she “wouldn't be surprised to hear that he's trying to sabotage the Republican Party and blame it all on Mike Johnson.”
Well, speaking of honesty and upholding an oath to the Constitution, you couldn't pick a worse example than Mace's (probable) favorite p***y grabber, Donald Trump.
Not surprisingly, Kurtz mentioned none of that. Instead, he moved on to discuss her stance on abortion, then got to the Stephanopoulos interview. He played a clip of Mace accusing Stephanopoulos of trying to “shame” her.
“What was it about the questioning by George Stephanopoulos, asking how you could possibly support Donald Trump that made you so angry?” Kurtz asked. It was a question obviously designed to get her to attack Stephanopoulos again. In that regard, she did not disappoint.
MACE: Well, first of all, I went up there to talk about the general election, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. I brought my underage daughter with me. I never would have had her on set or in studio if I knew that George Stephanopoulos was bringing me on ABC News to talk about my rape. I thought it was completely inappropriate. I was talking about 2024. That's what we had agreed to.
But at the same time, it really exposed the left. Because if you don't, if you don't succumb to their ideology, or prescribe to the way that they think, if you don't think the way they want you to, they will bully you. They will shame you. They'll shame you over being raped. As a man, George Stephanopoulos tried to mansplain rape to me, I don't need some man telling me how I should feel about rape. I don't need some man telling me as a rape victim that I can't vote Republican and vote for the man I believe that can save our country. That man is Donald Trump.
Kurtz obviously knew that was a load of crap. But he offered such mild pushback, it didn't look like pushback at all: “Well, Donald Trump, as you know, is now suing ABC. But just to be clear, you think the questions asked by Stephanopoulos were illegitimate, not fair game for a discussion on a Sunday show?” he asked. As if it were not totally clear what she was saying all along.
Mace now said, “I wouldn't call them illegitimate.” It was the way Stephanopoulos asked the questions, she claimed. “You don't bring somebody on to talk about their own rape without talking about it with them first and asking, Hey, is this okay that we have this in-depth discussion?”
But Stephanopoulos did not try to have an in-depth discussion about her rape. He was trying to have an in-depth discussion about Mace’s support for sexual assaulter Trump.
Instead of pointing that out, Kurtz let her go on whining about how she had been “forced” by Stephanopoulos to watch her “painful” video of her revealing that she had been raped.
FACT CHECK: As you can see below, the clip played by Stephanopoulos did not reveal painful details of the rape. It didn’t include any details of the rape at all. It was a very brief clip in which she said, “From some of us who've been raped, it can take 25 years to get up the courage and talk about being a victim of rape. And the first thing that happens when a woman comes out in public and says she's been raped, what is the first thing out of someone's mouth? Is that it didn't happen. This is why women do not come forward. They are afraid.”
Kurtz should have called BS on that. Instead, he thanked Mace “very much for taking the time to join us.”
The two of them should be ashamed.
You can watch what should be an April Fool’s joke of a media discussion, but isn’t, below, from the March 31, 2024 MediaBuzz. Underneath is Mace’s March 10, 2024 appearance on ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos.