Nancy Mace Accuses George Stephanopoulos of ‘Trying to Shame Me as a Rape Victim’ for Questioning Her Trump Endorsement | Video

Rep. Nancy Mace and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos engaged in a serious war of words on “This Week” Sunday. The often contentious Mace was prickly from the start after the ABC host asked why she endorsed Donald Trump after a judge found him liable for having raped author E. Jean Carroll. Mace, who has been open about being a victim of rape, said, “I’m not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim.”

Stephanopoulos insisted his intent was not to shame Mace and laid out his query again: “You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge—”

“—It was not a criminal court case, number one,” Mace interjected. “Number two, I live with shame. And you’re asking me a question about my political choices, trying to shame me as a rape victim — I find it disgusting, and quite frankly, E. Jean Carroll’s comments when she did get the judgment joking about what she was going to buy, it doesn’t… it makes it harder for women to come forward when they make a mockery out of rape.”

Mace continued in that vein and concluded, “I had to tell my story, because no other woman was coming towards me, no rape victims were represented, and you’re trying to shame me this morning. I’m just— I find it offensive and this is why women won’t come forward.”

In an attempt to bring the conversation back to the crimes Trump was found liable for, Stephanopoulos countered, “Women won’t come forward because they’re defamed by those who perpetrate rape.”

Mace ran back through her accusation that Stephanopoulos was trying to shame her as a rape victim and her disdain for Carroll’s joke that she would go “on a shopping spree” with the $83.3 million Trump has been ordered to pay in the case. Mace then asserted, “He was not… 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.”

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presided over the case, later clarified that “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

“Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” Kaplan added. “The jury’s finding of sexual abuse therefore necessarily implies that it found that Mr. Trump forcibly penetrated her vagina.”

“Mr. Trump’s attempt to minimize the sexual abuse finding as perhaps resting on nothing more than groping of Ms. Carroll’s breasts through her clothing is frivolous.”

Mace also insisted on noting that the ruling against Trump stemmed from a civil, as opposed to criminal, court case — an apparent attempt to downplay the case altogether. A criminal case is typically brought by or against an entity such as a city, county or state; a civil case is between two private parties. In a criminal case, guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and in a civil case, the jury examines what is most likely to have happened and who was responsible.

Watch the interview with Rep. Mace in the video above.

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