Gretchen Carlson on the Kavanaugh Hearings and #MeToo

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Where do you think the reckoning is and are we at a very dangerous, precarious moment or do you think this could be a moment to push it over the top?

GRETCHEN CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: So, I think this example with Kavanaugh is different than some of the other #MeToo examples we’ve seen over the last two years because we have so much politics involved in it. Both sides have probably made mistakes with the way in which they handled information and the way they politicized it. So, if you take politics out of it, I think it’s not surprising to see that once you have one accusation you tend to have another and another. We’ve seen that pattern play out over the last two years. I do think it will be a mistake to try and rush this vote before we can actually hear from more of these women, and more witnesses for that matter. Because unfortunately, Christiane, we’re still in this he said she said. And without actual evidence, it remains he said she said.

AMANPOUR: Are you amongst those who tend to believe the first accuser, the first witness, Christine Blasey Ford?

CARLSON: Well, I think here’s what’s changed since my story broke for them two years ago, women are actually believed or at least they’re given, you know, a second thought, right. It’s not just immediate. Some people immediately say they don’t believe them. But I think that that’s changed dramatically. I think that in the past, when a woman would come forward, and this is why women didn’t come forward in the past, was because you’re automatically maligned, you’re a liar, you’re just doing this for fame. I think that’s changed dramatically. But as I said before, usually where you have one person you tend to see that there developed some sort of pattern.

AMANPOUR: I just want to bring up a New York Times full-page ad that was in the newspaper today, and it is almost a replica of an ad that came out in 1991 and it’s 1,600 named remembering the 1,600 African-American women who said that they believe Anita Hill back when she was making these accusations against Clarence Thomas. Of course, he, as a Supreme Court nominee, was then confirmed and he sites on the Supreme Court today. But now, this latest one mirrors the number, 1,600 names but they are men who believe Christine Blasey Ford along with the women who signed petitions for her. How much of a dramatic move is that to see men standing up and having their names in print to be counted?

CARLSON: Huge. You know, my first television job was actually covering the Anita Hill hearings.

AMANPOUR: Really?

CARLSON: Yes. And I was promptly sexually harassed thereafter on the job.

AMANPOUR: By your own — by people inside your own —

CARLSON: Where I was working.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

CARLSON: So, my initial inclination as a young woman in her early 20s at that time was, well, of course I believe her. I mean, why would a woman put herself up to something like that unless she was telling the truth. And so, I was horrified at the way that she was denounced. The idea that 1,600 men now in 2018 would sign their names to say that I’m standing up for these women is huge.