Megyn Kelly: Roger Ailes was the Kim Jong Un of Cable News
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Megyn Kelly is telling more stories about her time at Fox News and working under Roger Ailes.
She said that she was working for Fox News in DC, when she got the call to go meet Ailes for the first time.
“And then you get a call to go meet with the big boss in New York and you think this is it,” she told Deadline. “He’s noticed me. I’ve caught the attention of Mr. Ailes was the exact quote from Brit Hume to me.”
She talked about going to NY to meet the Fox News boss.
“You go up there wide-eyed at the possibility of what your life might be thanks to your hard work,” she said. “You’re in there and by nature you want to try and charm your boss. That is true of all of us male or female, and then there’s a moment in the meeting where it turned.”
“Before you know it this person is talking to you in a way that is very familiar to you but shouldn’t be in the office setting,” she continued. “He’s lecturing you about how your very favorite anchor in the television industry slept her way to the top. She was smart, he says. Hopefully you’ll be smart too, he says. Every instinct inside of you first says no, no, no this isn’t happening. Maybe I misinterpreted it. Maybe I’ve heard him wrong. Maybe it’s a joke and I could just laugh it off and pretend it never happened.”
“The second thought is I’m such an idiot. I thought I was being called up here for opportunity,” Kelly added. “I thought my hard work had been recognized. I thought this was a career trajectory kind of moment. Instead I’m looking at a dirty old man who wants to get in my pants.”
She went on to say, “early on in my tenure at Fox when I was being harassed by Ailes, I didn’t know a lot of people,” she said. “I didn’t have a lot of female friends like I did 13 years later. I did have a couple and so I would sort of stick the toe in the water with the women I knew because [Ailes] was the king. I mean, it was like being in North Korea and trying to criticize Kim Jong Un.”
“So I’d carefully stick my toe in the water with other women like, ‘have you ever been in his office by yourself?’ ‘Have you ever sensed an odd vibe?’ ” she continued. “There was one woman in particular, the one I knew best, who I asked that of. She said, ‘absolutely not, he’s only been completely professional with me.’ You know what? She turned out to be one of his accusers.”
H/T People
