NBC’s Megyn Kelly says she knew the Charlie Rose story was coming, and had heard rumors about Matt Lauer‘s behavior, “but only rumors…not reportable facts.”
“When you’re a public figure, people do make up things about you, and put them in print. I’d know,” Kelly said at the Business Insider Ignition conference this afternoon.
Kelly said she had no inside knowledge, but was aware that reporters were sniffing around the story, and hoped the rumors weren’t true.
“Looking back at Fox, O’Reilly was a colleague, Roger Ailes was a colleague, Eric Bolling was a friend,” said Kelly referring to three of her former colleagues all of whom lost their jobs over sexual harassment allegations in the last 16 months.
- Earlier on TVNewser: NBC Fires Matt Lauer
“He harassed me early on in my tenure at Fox, and we got past it,” Kelly said of Ailes. “The promotions happened after we got past it. But I was scared. I was a second-year reporter at Fox, and had no power at the D.C. bureau. After the third time I rejected him, he told me: ‘When does your contract run out?'”
Kelly also opened up about dealing with Pres. Donald Trump, before and after the first GOP primary debate in 2015. “On the phone one night, he called me to yell at me, berate me and eventually hung up on me days before that first presidential debate because of a segment I had done on The Kelly File talking about Ivana Trump‘s sworn deposition accusing him of rape.”
“I never stopped covering him fairly even though the security threats in my and my children’s lives skyrocketed, I was not his chew toy. He continued to try to bully me. He wasn’t successful. At the end of 9 months of relentless attacks, over 100 tweets, there’s a fever pitch already against me. He could never get past it. I went right to Trump Tower and stood him down.”
As for reporting on Trump, Kelly reiterated that she doesn’t miss the minute-to-minute political coverage. “I’m all for hard-hitting journalism, but when you’re covering politics in the age of Trump, you might as well go stand in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and scream at the top of your lungs all day, everyday. I anchored 9 p.m. on the Fox News Channel, covering every controversy earnestly and in a tough manner. Did it do me any good? Was there an available audience to me at Fox News consisting of Republicans, Independents and Democrats who were open minded enough and there for persuading? You tell me.”
Kelly admitted she does have some regrets about her time at Fox. “I regret a lot of what I’ve said.” When you’re on live TV as much as she is, “you’re going to say a lot of stupid shit.”