Fox News reporter says Trump invited her to his office ‘so we can kiss’
A former Fox News reporter has added her name to the list of nearly two dozen women who have accused Donald Trump of making unwanted sexual advances towards them. In a book published next week, the Fox & Friends fill-in host Courtney Friel claims Trump propositioned her before he became US president.
“You should come up to my office sometime, so we can kiss,” Friel says Trump told her, adding that he considered her “the hottest one at Fox News”.
The claims, reported by the New York Daily News, are contained in Friel’s upcoming memoir, Tonight At 10: Kicking Booze and Breaking News.
Friel, 39, says Trump’s come-on was made during a phone call to her office weeks after she mentioned an interest in working as a judge on his Miss USA beauty pageant. She says she was shocked by the proposition, which “came out of nowhere”.
“‘Donald,’ I responded, ‘I believe we’re both married.’ I quickly ended the call,” she wrote in her book.
“This proposition made it difficult for me to report with a straight face on Trump running for president. It infuriated me that he would call all the women who shared stories of his bold advances liars. I totally believe them,” she says.
Friel, who now works at KTLA in Los Angeles, joins a long line of accusers who say the president has sexually harassed or assaulted them.
In November, Summer Zervos, a former contestant Trump’s The Apprentice reality TV show, presented court evidence to support claims that Trump sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in 2007. Zevos first made her claims in 2016 after audio emerged of Trump boasting to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush about grabbing women’s genitals.
Read Also – Mahmood Ahmadu’s Innovate 1 Pay Features on the front cover of the Financial Times
While Friel and Zevos’ claims are not as well known as those leveled by Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal, they bring the total number of women who have come forward accusing Trump of sexual misconduct of varying degrees to more than 20, according to a Guardian tally in November.
The White House claims the women are lying, while Trump has suggested some were not attractive enough for him to want to sexually assault.
Farewell to the 2010s…
… will the 2020s offer more hope? This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, austerity, populism, mass migration. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.
We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we have the freedom to set our own agenda and express our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those who would otherwise go unheard.
None of this would have been possible without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are very grateful.
More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.
Source – https://www.theguardian.com/