ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Rep. Nancy Mace a perfectly legitimate question about her support for Donald Trump. Apparently unable to answer it, Mace attacked Stephanopoulos as rape shaming her.
Rep. Nancy Mace's (R-SC) convenient poutrage occured during her appearance on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Here's part of the exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming a victim of that rape [E. Jean Carroll]. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?
MACE: Well, I will tell you, I was raped at the age of 16, and any rape victim will tell you, I’ve lived for 30 years with an incredible amount of shame over being raped. I didn't come forward because of that judgment and shame that I felt.
And it's a shame that you will never feel, George, and I’m not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim. I’m not going to do that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It's actually not about shaming you. It’s a question about Donald Trump.
MACE: No, you are shaming me.
The exchange went on and on. If you ask me, Stephanopoulos should have brought up the Access Hollywood video, in which Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women, as well as the 25 other women who have also accused him of sexual misconduct.
Regardless, in a jaw-dropping display of hypocrisy, Mace went on to shame E. Jean Carroll, the woman legally found to have been sexually abused and defamed by Trump:
MACE: It’s not a criminal court case, number one. Number two, I live with shame, and you're asking me a question about my political choices trying to shame me as a rape victim and find it disgusting.
And quite frankly, E. Jean Carroll's comments when she did get the judgment joking about what she was going to buy, it doesn't -- it makes it harder for women to come forward when they make a mockery out of rape, when they joke about it. It’s not OK.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Doesn't it make it harder for women to come forward when they're defamed by presidential candidates?
MACE: It makes it harder when other women joked about it and she’s joked about it. I find it offensive. And also I find it offensive that you are trying to shame me with this question.
The full interview is below. But you’d have to be blind or a partisan not to see how Mace was trying to bully her way out of a tough but very fair question. It was not about her rape, but about her character. Which has already been shown to be quite lacking, I might add. Just ask former members of her staff, who reportedly hate her.
But it was no surprise that Fox propagandist Harris Faulkner, who still calls herself a journalist, hosted Mace on her show Monday to whitewash the congresswoman’s ploy, make her out as a true victim and smear Stephonopoulos. I’ll also point out that Faulkner makes no secret of the fact that she’s a huge Trump fan.
After playing a brief clip of the Mace/Stephanopoulos back-and-forth and before Mace said a word, Faulkner declared, “I mean, that was unbelievable. First of all, what was that like to sit there and be questioned that way?”
Once again, Mace tried to justify her support for Trump by saying “he wasn’t found guilty of rape anywhere.” Which is technically true but is just as misleading as Sen. Katie Britt’s sex trafficking tale.
FACT CHECK: A jury found in a civil trial that Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll but that the abuse did not meet the legal standard of rape. Another jury found Trump had defamed Carroll after she spoke out about the assault, with the result that she was awarded $83.3 million in damages. And he continues to defame her. Plus, as I noted above, there are the 25 other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. As I also noted above, Trump is on video boasting about grabbing women by the p***y.
Not surprisingly, Faulkner mentioned none of that, nor Mace’s now second attempt to dismiss Carroll’s sexual abuse.
Mace went on to revisit her sanctimonious hypocrisy. Stephanopoulos, she whined, “has never felt the shame of rape. He does not know what this journey is like. It's a journey of healing over a lifetime.” Boasting about how tough the Citadel had made her, the woman who threw a fit over a simple question alleged that Stephanopoulos had been “playing Mr. Tough Guy” but “would not last 30 seconds at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.”
Faulkner said sympathetically, “I mean, you seemed to signal "enough" with your body language and your words that this - you felt bullied at that moment, and then you spoke the words ‘stop shaming me.’”
“That's why women won’t come forward when they're assaulted. It’s because of the judgment and the shame,” said the woman who cast judgment on Carroll.
If Mace really thinks her support of Trump is no biggie, she’d almost certainly say so. The fact that she keeps throwing up a Conservative Victim smokescreen tells you she can’t come up with a good reason that doesn’t expose her as a major hypocrite.
So, naturally, “tough gal” Mace went on a longer, bigger Conservative Victim tear:
MACE: And here he was judging me, bullying me and shaming me as a rape victim for my political choices and it's wrong, but it's almost like rape is bad unless you're Republican, and then we're going to shame you for it and the way that the left reacted, it's just a reflection of how bad Joe Biden's numbers are, that this is what they do to rape survivors, to rape victims, is to shame them for their for their political choices here.
And you know, I said my piece, I thought I did it more respectfully than I should have than I probably wanted to. But it was horrifying.
Mace later said she wanted to know what ABC’s “female leadership” thinks about the exchange.
“Oooh,” Faulkner said with excited enthusiasm. “That’s an excellent question. And about those women who may have been victims as well, how they saw you in that moment, standing tough. You said you were built for tough. You certainly are and I know it's a lifetime of healing for you. But along this route, just know you have a lot of support as a victim.”
Let me clear: I support Mace as a victim of sexual assault, too. But that had nothing to do with her attempts to shame Stephanopoulos out of asking her a perfectly logical question about her endorsement of Trump.
And you know what, Congresswoman? The fact that you aggressively obfuscate in response to the question is an answer. Just not the one you'd like to pretend you're offering up.
Let’s hope the publicity-hungry Mace gets asked about her hypocrisy every time she shows up on a news network that isn’t Fox. Please, interviewers, do not let her bully you out of asking the tough questions. She earns a salary from taxpayer dollars and she wants to keep earning that dough. We, the people, deserve to hear her explanation as to why she is supporting a sexual assaulter.
You can watch Mace on the March 10, 2024 ABC News’ This Week below and Harris Faulkner’s whitewash underneath, from the March 11, 2024 The Faulkner Focus.