Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina blasted ABC News host George Stephanopoulos Monday for “bullying” and “shaming” her over her support for former President Donald Trump as a personal victim of rape.
Stephanopoulos and Mace had a heated exchange on “This Week” Sunday over her support for Trump and the $83 million judgement against Trump in a civil defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Mace said the ABC News host had “no idea” of what she went through. (RELATED: ‘Didn’t She Vote To Send Me To Federal Prison?’: Steve Bannon Spars With Nancy Mace Over Contempt Vote)
“I was so shocked and dismayed by the line of questioning. George Stephanopoulos tried to bully me and shame me as a rape survivor over my support for Donald Trump, which is insane to me, because he wasn’t found guilty of rape anywhere,” Mace told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. “But the other thing is that George Stephanopoulos doesn’t – he has never felt the shame of rape. He doesn’t know what this journey is like. It’s a journey of healing over a lifetime and I will tell you, I’ve been built for tough, I’ve been through some very tough things, including the Citadel. The Citadel made me tougher than I’ve ever been. That guy playing Mr. Tough Guy yesterday, wouldn’t last 30 seconds at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. He has no idea what he is talking about.”
Mace first publicly discussed her rape during a 2019 debate in the South Carolina state legislature over a “heartbeat” bill that limited access to abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, according to the Post and Courier.
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“He was judging me, bullying me and shaming me as a rape victim for my political choices,” Mace told Faulkner about Stephanopoulos’s conduct. “And it’s wrong, but almost like rape is bad unless you are Republican, and then we’ll shame you for it and the way that the left reacted is just a reflection of how bad Joe Biden’s numbers are that this is what they do to rape survivors, to rape victims, to shame them for their political choices.”
Stephanopoulos played Mace’s 2019 remarks, then questioned Mace’s endorsement of Trump, prompting Mace to accuse the former Clinton White House aide of “shaming” her. Mace criticized Carroll for joking about going on a shopping spree with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and called Stephanopoulos’s line of questioning “disgusting.”
“I said my piece, I thought I did it more respectfully than I should have and I probably wanted to, but it was horrifying. You could see at the very beginning of that interview, I winced,” Mace told Faulkner. “You can see in my facial expression, because I was there to talk about 2024, I wasn’t brought on to talk about my own rape. I didn’t agree to any of that, and he shares the speech I gave, the impassioned speech five years ago about telling my story for the first time. It is very difficult for me to watch that speech, it’s painful. You can see it on my face. I was in dismay that this is where he was going with this. It was disgusting.”
Mace previously clashed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York after the New York Democrat accused the South Carolina Republican of “minimizing” trauma after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building.
“I want to know what ABC’s female leadership, what do they think about what he did? They’ve got female presidents, what do they think about what he did yesterday?” Mace asked.
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