CNN anchor Carol Costello disclosed her own experience with sexual harassment on Wednesday morning, refuting the contentious and belittling statements about workplace sexual harassment Donald Trump and his son, Eric, made on Tuesday.
Costello challenged Eric Trump’s notion that “a strong, powerful woman” like his sister, Ivanka Trump, “wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to [harassment].”
“As a strong and powerful woman who was sexually harassed in my twenties, I say that’s not true,” Costello argued. “Anyone could be harassed.”
“It’s also scary to report abuse: I feared being blackballed in my field. That’s why I did not report it,” Costello said, referencing Eric Trump’s suggestion to “take it up with Human Resources.”
The CNN host also countered Donald Trump’s expectation of women to “find another career or find another company” in the face of sexual harassment.
“I wish I could have left my job, but frankly, at the time, I needed the money,” she said. “And I loved my job.”
She gave a shoutout to Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News anchor who filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against then-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes in July. Ailes has since stepped down from his position.
“You’re one courageous lady,” Costello said of Carlson, who also rebuked Eric Trump’s statement via Twitter.
More than a dozen women have shared similar stories of harassment by Ailes since the scandal emerged. For this reason, New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor cited the lawsuit as the “most consequential sexual harassment suit we’ve ever seen in American history” on Wednesday morning.
“It’s already had so many ripple effects and it hasn’t even really hit the courtroom yet. These are still at the allegation level,” Kantor said on CBS “This Morning.” “And yet more and more women are coming forward.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.