Gretchen Carlson glad to see Roger Ailes booted at Fox: ‘I felt angry that it took so long’
Former Fox News host received some vindication last week when longtime Fox News CEO Roger Ailes officially stepped down from his position at the cable news network.
Carlson had been the one to get the ball rolling against Ailes when she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him that alleged she had been fired from her job for refusing to have sex with the former Fox News boss.
In her first interview since filing the lawsuit, Carlson tells the Washington Post that she's relieved to see Ailes get shoved out the door -- although she wishes that Fox had done it much earlier.
"I felt angry that it took so long," Carlson tells the Post. "It’s complicated — there was relief that now I would be believed — and I was happy to a certain extent over that."
Initially, Fox decided to circle the wagons around Ailes and have their employees go on air and vouch for his character.
After parent company 21st Century Fox opened up an independent investigation into Ailes's behavior, however, several more women came forward with stories of the former Fox boss's sexual misconduct. The final nail in Ailes's coffin reportedly came when star anchor Megyn Kelly told investigators that Ailes had sexually harassed her.
Carlson, meanwhile, was worried that she'd be all alone without any support, even as her former employer trashed her on a daily basis.
"I thought I would be fighting this all by myself," she said, although she cautioned that women who file sexual harassment suits do often have to fight lonely battles by themselves. "We’ve moved the conversation, but we haven’t changed the world in three weeks. I don’t want to tell women they won’t be retaliated against.”
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