Rep. Nancy Mace claims that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos tried to “bully [and] shame” her for her own experience as a rape survivor, in an interview when he asked why she endorsed former President Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault multiple times.
“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,” the South Carolina Republican said Monday on Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus.”
“He has never felt the shame of rape,” she said of Mr. Stephanopoulos. “He does not know what this journey is like. It’s a journey of healing over a lifetime.”
Ms. Mace and Mr. Stephanopoulos got into a heated back and forth during the interview Sunday, when he asked how she could endorse the former president after he was found liable for sexual abuse in the defamation lawsuit brought by magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.
The “This Week” host played a video clip of the Republican congresswoman giving testimony of her experience of being raped before she announced her run for Congress in 2019.
Ms. Mace said Mr. Stephanopoulos was “shaming” her, but he said the question wasn’t meant to shame her, it was a question about Mr. Trump.
“What you’re doing is defending that has been found liable for rape, I don’t understand how you can do that,” he said.
Ms. Mace shot back saying he wasn’t found guilty in a criminal court.
“This was a civil judgment over sexual abuse,” she said.
She said in her Fox interview that she didn’t know the ABC host would bring up her testimony, and that “it’s very difficult for [her] to watch.”
“And I said my piece. I thought I did it very — I did it more respectfully than I should have, than I probably wanted to. But it was horrifying. And you could see, at the very beginning of that interview, I went, you can see in my facial expression, because I was there to talk about 2024,” she said on Fox.
“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, impassioned speech five years ago about telling my story for the first time,” she said.
On X after the interview, Ms. Mace railed against Mr. Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton.
“I’m not going to be shamed for being raped by a guy who worked for a president who wagged his finger and lied to the American people about having oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office…” she wrote. “STFU @GStephanopoulos.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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