You don’t have to be a fan of Nancy Mace to realize that what George Stephanopoulos said to her yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” was ugly and low.
Mace was talking about the upcoming 2024 election. Stephanopoulos then tried to use Mace’s own personal rape story (which happened at age 16) to then question how she could support Donald Trump.
Stephanopoulos: "As a rape victim… how can you endorse Trump?"
Rep. Nancy Mace: "You're asking me a question about my political choices, trying to shame me as a rape victim. And I find it disgusting."
Source: ABC, This Week, Stephanopoulos pic.twitter.com/JaSvorCM2W
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 10, 2024
On ABC’S This Week, Stephanopoulos posed a question to Mace, referencing Trump’s recent legal troubles and a civil court ruling against him in a defamation case involving E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault. Stephanopoulous asked how Mace could endorse Trump given these accusations.
Mace, visibly taken aback by the line of questioning, condemned Stephanopoulos’s approach, calling it “disgusting” and accusing him of attempting to shame her.
“It’s a shame that you will never feel, George,” Mace said. “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.”
Mace went on to criticize Carroll’s comments following the judgment, highlighting the negative impact such remarks can have on victims of sexual assault.
“And quite frankly, E. Jean Carroll’s comments when she did get the judgment,’ Mace continued, “joking about what she was going to buy, makes it harder for women to come forward when they make a mockery of rape. When they joke about it. It’s not okay.”
Mace was referring to comments Carroll made on The Rachel Maddow Show following the court ruling. There, Carroll joked about Trump being fined, telling Maddow that the two of them are going to go on a shopping spree with the money she was awarded.
Mace later went on to talk to Harris Faulkner about this exchange with Stephanopoulos, essentially calling this a bait-and-switch moment, as she was brought on to talk about the election, not the civil judgment against Trump.
And oh, the high irony of GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS trying to act all self-righteous about presidential candidates accused of sexual assault and paying civil judgments.
George Stephanopolous has been maligning sexual abuse Survivors for 30 Years. He calls them “Bimbos” a Half Dozen times in his 1999 book. pic.twitter.com/TfPm4tVZK2
— Greg Kelly (@gregkellyusa) March 10, 2024
It is worth pointing out that Donald Trump was NOT found liable for rape, but for sexual abuse. And Mace points out that E. Jean Carroll’s behavior after the judgment – the comments to Rachel Maddow specifically – was a terrible look for someone who claims they were raped. And that’s leaving aside Carroll’s questionable comments and her lack of recall about the events involved, along with a conflict of interest between the judge and Carroll’s lawyer (which will surely be used by the Trump team in the appeal), and the fact that this entire trial happened in New York, where the jury pool is not likely to be friendly to Donald Trump.
E. Jean Carroll thanked George Stephanopoulos.
Thank you, @GStephanopoulos for valiantly defending me.
I wish Representative @RepNancyMace well.
And I salute all survivors for their strength, endurance, and holding on to their sanity. https://t.co/0GTOwGIXkE— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) March 10, 2024
At which point Tara Reade entered the conversation. Remember her? The woman who had a pretty credible accusation of rape against Joe Biden? Yeah, she was not amused with Carroll’s support of Joe Biden, nor of George Stephanopoulos’s selective support for certain victims.
A reminder again @ejeancarroll that you know I was raped by Biden when I was his staffer and silenced by the media and yet you publicly support my rapist! Sit down before you lecture other rape survivors. Hypocrisy surrounding you. @GStephanopoulos knows I exist as well and… https://t.co/oUSaQSFE3N pic.twitter.com/3h8aesElC4
— Tara Reade 🐎 (@ReadeAlexandra) March 11, 2024
I am now waiting for George Stephanopoulos bringing on a rape survivor that Joe Biden endorsed, and then having him ask that person about Tara Reade’s accusations. Oh, would that be crass and tacky and gross and… shaming??? Huh. Funny, isn’t it? I’m sure that the ABC higher-ups would stop Stephanopoulos before he would victim shame a Democrat… right? I’m joking, of course. Stephanopoulos has been a political operative and a Bill Clinton apologist for his entire career, even when he is supposedly now an “objective” journalist.
The crux of the matter really isn’t about Donald Trump or Joe Biden, and the accusations against them. It’s that George Stephanopoulos took the opportunity to shame Nancy Mace over something she had no control over, blindsiding her during an interview, in order to score a cheap political hit. And a major network is apparently okay with it, because Mace has an “R” after her name. ABC should be making Stephanopoulos apologize, but that would mean they would have to have standards. Stephanopoulos won’t apologize on his own, because that would mean he was capable of feeling shame himself – and after decades defending the Clintons, I’m pretty sure he lost that ability a long time ago.
Featured image: composite collage of Representative Nancy Mace (official Congressional portrait, cropped, public domain) and George Stephanopoulos (Tulane Public Relations via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0 DEED))
Stephen C says: The practiced look of sincerity from Stephanopoulos is priceless.
A reader says: First of all, she brought up her rape. He was asking her a legitimate question: how can she, a rape survivor, support an adjudicated rapist for president? That’s a legitimate question about the election. He never shamed her, he just asked her about her reasoning for supporting Trump. She then pivoted and tried to make it out to be this huge scandal. It’s simply not. What happened to her is horrible, but it doesn’t change the legitimacy of the question.
Secondly, and I will repeat this until you and the rest of the bloggers here get it: Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist. The literal ONLY reason he wasn’t found liable for rape at the trial is because of how the New York penal law was written at the time. That law stated that rape was the forcible penetration of a v—-ina by a p—is. Since Carroll testified she didn’t know what he penetrated her with, they couldn’t call it rape. The law has since been revised: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/30/new-york-rape-definition-expanded-bill-kathy-hochul-e-jean-carroll-donald-trump
But Judge Kaplan himself stated that Trump did rape Carroll according to other definitions—specifically Federal— of the word: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump-rape-language-e-jean-carroll
Here’s the Federal definition from the FBI: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/rape#:~:text=The%20revised%20UCR%20definition%20of,rape%20and%20incest%20are%20excluded.
So you can try and spin that however you like but the facts are the facts: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll. Therefore Nancy Mace, as a rape survivor, is stating she will vote for a rapist. That’s kind of a big deal and worth discussing.
I also find it interesting that in all your pearl clutching you and none of the other writers here have said a peep about Katie Britt. That story is far more damaging and awful than the Nancy Mace story, because Britt used a sex trafficking survivor’s story without her permission and lied about it, implying that it a) happened in the US, b) happened during President Biden’s administration, and c) was perpetuated by drug cartels. The original incident happened between 2004-2008, happened in Mexico and had nothing to do with the cartels. You’d be far better served demanding that Britt apologize for lying and to the survivor whose story she stole for political clout. That’s the real controversy.
Cameron says: You only think that you hate the media enough. You don’t.
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