Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina fired back at ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on Monday for “bullying” and “shaming” her for her support of former President Donald Trump, who has been the subject of unproven sexual assault allegations.
Stephanopoulos and Mace clashed on “This Week” on Sunday over her support for Trump and the $83 million judgment against Trump in a civil defamation action brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Mace said the ABC News anchor had “no idea” what she had gone through.
“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 addressed her rape during a 2019 debate in South Carolina’s state house over a “heartbeat” measure that restricted abortion access after six weeks of pregnancy.
“Here 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 it’s 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 statements and then questioned her support for Trump, causing Mace to accuse the former Clinton White House official of “shaming” her. Mace chastised Carroll for joking about going shopping with MSNBC journalist Rachel Maddow and found Stephanopoulos’ 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.”
Megyn Kelly had earlier shredded George Stephanopoulos for his ‘rape shaming’ of Nancy Mace.
“What a kind sensitive man who clearly cares deeply about women and their sexual assault allegations,” Kelly said. “Thanks for being an ally, George. I see how concerned you are that victims might not come forward if they are publicly attacked by their rapist or his defenders to be sure. That is a very real concern.”
“It happens all the time, which you know, because you invented it,” she went on. “Remember when you created a whole command center designed to smear Bill Clinton’s sexual assault and rape accusers so you could elevate him right into the presidency? The attorney representing many of Bill’s accusers, and there were many, George. Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Jennifer Flowers to name just a few, said you and James Carville at Hillary Clinton’s direction formed a so-called War Room, whose purpose was to destroy any woman that would challenge Bill Clinton. You know ‘the war room. They made a whole movie about it.”
“Such a tough guy,” she remarked after airing a clip from the film. “This attorney points out that you don’t like to talk about this particular behavior, George, maybe that’s why you skipped it in your discussion with Nancy Mace. But as you know, private detectives were hired. The women say they were threatened and they were publicly shamed by you and your well-funded team. Did you worry then that this behavior might shame victims from coming forward? You admitted in your own memoir that Hillary Clinton told you about one accuser quote, ‘we have to destroy her story.’ Did you object? Did you say that’s shaming? No. In fact, you later described yourself as Bill Clinton’s quote, ‘enabler.’ But sir, how could you have enabled and defended a man like this accused by multiple women of sexual assault, rape, and harassment?”
“Which brings us to Paula Jones. You were Clinton’s attack dog. When Jones came forward claiming Bill Clinton had exposed himself to her, that when he was governor of Arkansas, he summoned her through state troopers to a little rock, Arkansas hotel room and took out his penis,” she added.
“A charge Clinton denies just as Trump denies Eugene Carroll’s allegations against him,” she continued. “What do you think he wanted done with that thing, George? Just a little show and tell. Jones was poor, a graduate of secretarial school and worked for the state. She had no power, no connections, and he was the sitting governor. She didn’t go to Columbia and Oxford and become a Rhodes scholar like you, George.”
“She was a nothing to you. Your buddy Carville immediately went after Ms. Jones infamously saying, ‘If you drag a hundred dollars bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.’ And you did you defend Paula Jones saying, ‘we don’t shame accusers. That’s wrong.’ No. You compare Jones to Tanya Harding as quoting here from the New York Times. Just another woman seeking cash for telling a tabloid tale.”
“Fire up that war room George and destroy her,” she added. “Bill Clinton would ultimately pay Paula Jones almost a million dollars to settle her civil suit against him. And you remained Team Clinton all the way to say nothing of Juanita Broderick’s rape allegation or Kathleen Willey’s allegations and more. But now you quote, ‘don’t understand how Nancy Mace can support a man found liable for sexual assault of one woman 30 years ago in a civil trial in which the burden of proof is just 51% likely.’ My God. How did anyone at ABC think this was a good line of inquiry for George Stephanopoulos?”
This is clearly a debacle for ABC News and reduces the network’s credibility on women’s issues. When a news show host is shoving journalism aside to make partisan attacks, there is always a chance that backfires.
That is what happened with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, raising the question: Why is this political operator even a news show host to begin with?
