Republican Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on George Stephanopoulos’ “This Week” on Sunday to stump for Donald Trump, whom she recently endorsed despite disavowing him after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The interview took a turn when Stephanopoulos asked how Mace justified endorsing a man when “judges in two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape.”
After noting that she survived rape at the age of 16, the South Carolina congresswoman accused Stephanopoulos of trying to “shame” her. “I’m not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim,” she said.
To his credit, Stephanopoulos stuck to his guns, explaining that his question wasn’t about shaming anybody; it was meant to ask the congresswoman to square the circle of supporting a man whom a jury has ordered to pay $83 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her when he claimed she lied about him sexually assaulting her. The decision came less than a year after Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.
Mace chose to dig her heels in. She called Stephanopoulos’ question “disgusting,” adding that, “E. Jean Carroll’s comments when she did get the judgment, joking about what she was going to buy, it makes it harder for women to come forward.”
This wasn’t an answer, obviously, and Mace returned to accusing Stephanopoulos of trying to shame her, which she found “offensive.” She then said his question is the reason women do not come forward in sexual abuse cases.
“Women won’t come forward, because they’re defamed by those who perpetrate rape,” Stephanopoulos countered, before reiterating his original point. “I’m asking you a question about why you endorse someone who’s been found liable for rape.”
“It was not in criminal court,” Mace responded.
After floundering like this, Mace pivoted briefly to the murder of University of Georgia student Laken Riley and her family’s recent meeting with Trump, suggesting that the Riley family’s appearance with Trump somehow refuted the fact that a court found Trump liable for sexual assault.
Mace’s support of Trump, according to her, relies on her feelings that after he was found liable for sexually assaulting a woman, that woman’s comments—comments that lightly ridiculed her abuser—rubbed Mace the wrong way.
Asked why she is supporting someone who’s been found liable for rape, Mace answered, “He was not found guilty in a civil—in a criminal court of law. It was a civil—it was sexual abuse. It wasn’t actually rape, by the way.”
So because a civil court found him liable, but not a criminal one, the sexual abuse doesn’t count at all, apparently.
E. Jean Carroll chose to offer grace to Mace, writing on X (formerly Twitter):
Thank you, [George Stephanopoulos] for valiantly defending me. I wish Representative Nancy Mace well. And I salute all survivors for their strength, endurance, and holding on to their sanity.
Mace is no stranger to endorsing Republican men who have allegedly failed sexual abuse survivors. After helping oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership in 2023, she threw her support behind Rep. Jim Jordan. But when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her about the allegations that Jordan remained silent about the sexual abuse of multiple young men while he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, she responded, “Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know anything, and I don’t know anything about it.”
This is the Republican Party in 2024.
We are joined by our friend Christina Reynolds, who is senior VP of communications and content at EMILY’s List. Christina talks with Kerry and Markos about how small a box the Republican Party is locked into on reproductive rights.
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