Politics

Mark Sanford pushes back at questions over personal life: ‘Is this Fox News or National Enquirer?’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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Last week when former Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford won election to the state’s first congressional district, he added another chapter to the political drama surrounding his infidelity, and on “Fox News Sunday” he snapped at moderator Chris Wallace when Wallace brought up the matter.

Wallace asked about the current state of Sanford’s personal life, which involved him and his Argentinean fiancée Maria Belen Chapur, with whom he had the extramarital affair.

“You are now engaged to the woman with whom you had the affair, Maria Belen Chapur. She made a brief appearance, and we have a picture of it up on your screen at your victory party which raised some eyebrows. Question: What did your boys think of that? And — your four boys, and have they accepted her?”

Sanford resisted those questions and said he was not going to entertain them as one of his sons had college friends visiting.

“I’m not going to go into inner family conversations, but I would just say it is what it is, and I’m, right now, at a weekend with one of my boys who has a whole host of different college friends here scattered across this house that I’m sitting in right now,” Sanford replied.

Wallace then attempted to nail down more details about the Sanford and Chapur engagement.

“Do you have a date for your wedding and will your fiancée — will she come to Washington to live with you?” Wallace asked. “I feel like I’m The National Enquirer here.’

Sanford declined once again, agreeing with Wallace’s reference to the National Enquirer.

“Exactly — is this Fox News or National Enquirer?” he replied. “So, I’m not going to make news on that front tonight — or this morning with these college kids.”

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