Before Republican Rep. Nancy Mace bit her head off Sunday, ABC News' “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos had asked her a perfectly reasonable question.
Why, as a rape survivor, she wondered, would I support someone for president who sexually abuses women?
opinion columnist
Robin Abcarian
Stephanopoulos had just played a 2019 clip of Mace, then a member of the South Carolina Legislature, speaking emotionally about being raped at age 16, how ashamed she had felt and how long it took her to come forward because she was afraid no one would know. I would believe him. hers. She was asking state lawmakers, in the most personal way, to include an exception for rape and incest in a draconian anti-abortion bill, and they did.
Describing Mace's testimony as “candid and brave,” Stephanopoulos asked why, given that history, he would support former President Trump.
“Judges and two different juries have found him responsible for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape,” Stephanopoulos said. “How does this support for Donald Trump square with the testimony we just saw?”
That circle can only be squared on Planet MAGA, where nothing the former president has done is considered disqualifying. In the surreal exchange that followed, Mace repeatedly accused Stephanopoulos of trying to embarrass his as a rape victim, and stated that her very question would make it more difficult for rape survivors to come forward.
“I live in shame and you ask me about my political decisions, trying to shame me as a rape victim,” Mace said, “and I find it disgusting.”
“It's not about shaming you,” Stephanopoulos responded. “It's a question about Donald Trump.”
How I hate to write this, but I don't think I've ever seen a woman invoke the rape card like this. So fake. So damaging.
And before you start screaming about how Trump was technically not found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll, it's important to remember that even the judge in that case said that what Trump did to Carroll all those years ago in a dressing room at Bergdorf was, in fact, rape.
“The conclusion that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was 'raped' within the meaning of 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.' '. ,'” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan. “Indeed, as the trial evidence recounted below makes clear, the jury concluded that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Not content with accusing Stephanopoulos of trying to embarrass her, Mace also accused Carroll of trivializing sexual assault by making a small joke about how she could spend the $83 million juries awarded her in her two defamation cases.
“And, frankly, E. Jean Carroll's comments, when she was sentenced, joking about what she was going to buy?” Mace said. “Women find it more difficult to report when rape is mocked.”
I'm just guessing, but I think the news that one victim's attacker has to pay him millions of dollars in damages for saying he lied about it might inspire others to come forward. Maybe even en masse.
Still, what Carroll said did not trivialize the violation: “I would like to give the money to something that Donald Trump hates,” Carroll said on “Good Morning America” in January. “If it will cause you pain to give money to certain things, that is my intention. Well, maybe a fund for women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.”
On Sunday, to his credit, Carroll refused to tangle with Mace and instead posted on X that he wished Mace well.
“And,” Carroll added, “I congratulate all the survivors for their strength, resilience and for maintaining their sanity.”
That was a neat trick Mace tried to pull off: trying to embarrass Carroll while declaring herself the real shaming victim.
Mace is not the only high-profile Republican lawmaker to falsely invoke rape to support Trump.
Last week, Alabama Sen. Katie Britt's much-maligned response to President Biden's State of the Union address framed rape in a totally bizarre way. Britt, whose histrionic performance instantly became the subject of “Saturday Night Live,” implied that Biden's border policies were to blame for the sex trafficking of a Mexican woman who was actually exploited in Mexico during the George administration. W. Bush.
“The cartels put her on a mattress in a room that was a shoebox, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours,” Britt said, his voice shaking with emotion. “We would not agree with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America and, in my opinion, it's about time we start acting like it. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”
I doubt Britt believed what she was saying, just as I doubt Mace really believed Stephanopoulos was trying to embarrass her. This is political theater at its worst.
In Mace's case, trying to turn the tables on Stephanopoulos was a convenient way to deflect his obvious hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of all the folks who profess family values and support the re-election of the twice-impeached former president still facing 91 felonies. serious. counts for a wide variety of crimes, and who has boasted… please let's not forget — who can grab women by the genitals with impunity.
Like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and many other Republicans, Mace once condemned Trump, blamed him for the insurrection and declared that he was unfit for office.
His change of heart came, he told Stephanopoulos, because “I listened to my voters in South Carolina and they are over January 6.”
But she never explained why, as an outspoken advocate for rape survivors, she supports a man considered guilty of the same crime.
I would suggest that's because you can't. His only defense, as he demonstrated last week, is a meaningless offense.
