Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on Monday accused ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of trying to “bully” her during an interview Sunday morning when he pressed her on why she endorsed former President Trump.
“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,” she said on Fox News’s “The Faulkner Focus.”
“But the other thing is that, George Stephanopoulos, he doesn’t — he has never felt the shame of rape. He does not know what this journey is like. It’s a journey of healing over a lifetime,” she added.
Mace and Stephanopoulos got caught in a heated debate during ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday when he asked her how she could endorse Trump after he was found liable for sexual battery in a defamation lawsuit with E. Jean Carroll last year. He had played a clip of her delivering testimony about being a victim of rape shortly before she announced her bid for Congress in 2019.
Throughout the exchange on Sunday, Mace criticized Stephanopoulos for “shaming” her by asking why she supported Trump.
“And it’s a shame that you will never feel, George, 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 said.
Stephanopoulos maintained that his question was not meant to “shame” her and at one point called her “courageous” for coming forward. He still continued to press her on how she could endorse Trump after saying he should never hold office again after the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and given that he had been found liable for sexual battery.
Mace said in her interview Monday that she was “shocked and dismayed by the line of questioning.” She also said that she was not aware he was going to bring up her testimony during the interview.
“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 told host Harris Faulkner.
“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. It’s very difficult for me to watch that speech. It’s painful,” she said.
Mace also took to social media after her ABC interview on Sunday to further rail against Stephanopoulos, posting a full clip of the exchange.
A spokesperson for ABC News stood by Stephanopoulos’s interview when reached for comment by The Hill.
“George did his job by asking meaningful questions that are relevant to our viewers,” the spokesperson said.
Updated: 6:10 p.m.