Republican South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace says she is unbothered by her choice to support Donald Trump’s run for a second presidency despite previously arguing that he should not hold office again because his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

“I listened to my voters in South Carolina, and they’ve moved beyond January 6th,” Mace said Sunday on ABC News’s This Week, alluding to how the former US president dominated the recent presidential preference primary in that state as well as others. “Voters held him accountable through our Republican primaries this year. He’s won overwhelmingly.”

Mace on Sunday also vociferously defended throwing her support behind Trump despite him being held civilly liable for sexually abusing magazine columnist E Jean Carroll. Mace has previously spoken about surviving a rape when she was a teenager, and she accused This Week host George Stephanopoulus of trying to shame her about her past by grilling her about her support for Trump, though he denied it.

Trump is the Republicans’ presumptive nominee to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Biden, despite facing more than 90 criminal charges for subverting the outcome of his failed 2020 re-election bid, retention of classified information, and hush-money payments. In addition to a civil jury verdict finding him liable for the sexual abuse of Carroll, Trump has also been adjudicated a business fraudster in a New York state attorney general’s lawsuit centering on his entrepreneurial practices.

Mace had said Trump ruined “his entire legacy” immediately after his supporters launched the Capitol attack in protest of his defeat to Biden. She also pleaded with her fellow Republicans “to start over”, find a “new voice” and “hold [Trump] accountable” for his role in connection with January 6.

But she voted against impeaching Trump over the Capitol attack. And then in January, although he had backed a Republican candidate who unsuccessfully challenged her ahead of the 2022 midterms, Mace endorsed Trump in November’s election.

Mace told Stephanopoulos on This Week that she stood by her reversal on Trump “because court cases and lawsuits [have] nothing to do with you or me”.

“It doesn’t affect the American people,” said Mace, who has been in Congress since 2021.

Stephanopoulos also made it a point to ask Mace how she could support Trump in light of the Carroll case. For one, the 46-year-old congresswoman has talked publicly about how she was raped at age 16. Furthermore, she has supported rape and incest exceptions throughout her legislative career while advocating for bans on abortion.

Mace said she took offense at Stephanopoulos’s line of inquiry.

“Any rape victim will tell you I’ve lived for 30 years with an incredible amount of shame over being raped,” Mace said. “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.”

Stephanopoulos said he was not trying to shame Mace and said he meant only to understand her endorsement of Trump. He asked whether she found it “offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable” for a rape allegation that the judge in the Carroll case deemed to be substantially true.

Mace responded by saying that Trump had not been criminally charged in the Carroll case. She also criticized Carroll for joking about going shopping with some of the nearly $90m or so in damages that she had been awarded in her case against Trump, alleging it was evidence that the columnist was making “a mockery out of rape”.

“I find it offensive that as a rape victim you’re trying to shame me for my political choices,” Mace also said.

Mace on Monday appeared on the politically conservative Fox News network and said of her interview with Stephanopoulos: “It’s almost like rape is bad unless you’re a Republican, and then we’re going to shame you for it.”

After Mace’s exchange with Stephanopoulos, Carroll went on Twitter/X and thanked the host for “valiantly defending” her.

Carroll also wrote: “I wish representative Mace well. And I salute all survivors for their strength, endurance and holding on to their sanity.”

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