In a recent episode of the Politico podcast, “Women Rule,” leftist CNN pundit Sally Kohn recalled the alleged sexual harassment she encountered from former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes.
Kohn recounted two incidents with Mr. Ailes, one before she began working for Fox and another just before she left the network. “I go into Roger’s office and he tells me I have pretty eyes,” she said of the first interaction. “Five times in like five minutes.”
The liberal author noted that she “got off easy” with such an interaction with Ailes, who was accused of sexually harassing a number of women at the network during his tenure. (Mr. Ailes passed away in May of 2017 at the age of 77.)
On her way out of Fox, Kohn had a final meeting with Ailes where the media giant again complimented her beauty.
“He told me again how pretty my eyes are several times and then he told me — I can’t say this straight-faced – ‘I mean, you’re so beautiful. Men must not know what to do with you,'” Kohn claimed.
Kohn, who is openly gay and married to a woman, answered, “I don’t know what to do with that statement, Roger.”
On Wednesday, Kohn said via Twitter that the comment about her beauty from Ailes was “surreal.” She also quipped that the former CEO calling her “beautiful” is “just reason 17,438 to question his judgment.”
The pundit said she didn’t fully grasp the severity of the harassment at the time because she was “more distracted by the things he was saying about Obama and Muslims.”
“The big sexual harassment thing didn’t register because there was like — there was a lot to wade through, you know?” she explained.