Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Elevated Sense of Self-Regard


As The Hill reports, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has

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.



Oh, good Lord.  Since revealing in a debate over an abortion bill in the South Carolina legislature in 2019 that she had been raped twenty five years earlier at age 16, Mace has tried to make the violent the heart of her political identity.

Though she successfully argued for including an exception for rape and incest in the bill curbing women's reproductive freedom, Mace has since opposed a right to abortion. She also has endorsed the nomination of Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, even though Trump denounced her run for the House of Representatives in 2022 while Nikki Haley promoted it.

So much for loyalty.  Stephanopoulos asked Mace "Judges in two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming a victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?"

The judges concluded that Trump was not responsible for rape, which under New York State law requires penile penetration. However, they found that the New York businessman had committed sexual assault in what is commonly considered rape. So, there is that.

Nevertheless, Donald Trump is the guy who is on tape admitting that he sexually assaults women and Stephanopoulos would have been committing journalistic malpractice had he not asked Mace about her unqualified support for a guy who has bragged about doing what he wants, when he wants, with whatever woman he wants.

Instead of defending Trump as the Republican more likely to defeat the devilish Joe Biden nor as a candidate who promotes conservative values or causes, Mace turned on Stephanopoulos, who questioned her relentlessly while remarking "you've talked courageously about that" (being raped).

Nonetheless, the congresswoman persisted in dishonestly condemning Stephanopoulos, completely without cause, trying to gin up resentment against him.. Last November, as Republicans were flopping around trying to elect a Speaker of the House, Representative Dusty Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, outed Nancy Mace as a self-absorbed narcissist. 

 

"This is a time," Johnson asserted, when we need people who are interested in problem-solving, not self-aggrandizement. At about the same time, The New Republic (not behind a paywall) noted that The Daily Beast (possibly behind a paywall)

examined the South Carolina representative’s staff handbook and interviewed several of her former staffers. The main message was clear: All eyes should be on Mace at all times.

“Are we in a P.R. firm, or working for a member of Congress?” a former senior aide said they repeatedly asked themselves while working for Mace.

The handbook, which Mace reportedly wrote herself, includes clear instructions for making sure the congresswoman gets the most attention possible.

Staffers are also expected to book Mace at least 15 television appearances per week: a minimum of nine spots on national channels (between one and three times a day) and six or more times on local outlets. And to get on television, she’ll pull stunts—like strip the House speaker of his gavel.

Former staffers criticized Mace’s decision to vote to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace later used her vote to cast herself as a maverick, fundraising aggressively off the move.

But according to a former senior aide, she didn’t actually care all that much. “She saw the votes on the board and said, ‘Fuck it, I’m just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.’”

Mace also has other staff metrics with the hope of getting her on television. Staff are required to send out at least one press release per day, an unusually high rate....

The Daily Beast reviewed other internal documents from Mace’s office, including her office budget. She has dedicated more than a third of her office’s annual $500,000 budget for “marketing,” a word almost unseen on Capitol Hill.

“It is not normal for a member to prioritize media and comms over actual legislation like that,” a second former Mace staffer told The Daily Beast. “In my experience with and in other offices, comms serves to promote what the member is doing legislatively. In Mace’s office, legislation served to get her more media opportunities.”

So this is United States Representative Nancy Mace. George Stephanopoulos was not not blaming the rape on her, not questioning her decision to go public about the incident, nor in any way to shame her. If he had been, it wouldn't have been successful, anyway, for Nancy Mace is shameless.  Nancy Mace is no whore, but she is an attention whore.



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