The former “Fox & Friends” co-host says she assumed they just “went the wrong way.”
A former Fox News anchorwoman who accused Bill O’Reilly of sexually harassing her in 2011 is now claiming that Donald Trump kissed her on the lips in an elevator.
Juliet Huddy said Thursday morning on the “Mornin!!! With Bill Schulz” podcast (which has a paywall) that it happened around 2005 or 2006 when Trump was hosting “The Apprentice” on NBC.
“He took me to lunch in Trump Tower,” she said. “He said goodbye to me in an elevator while his security guy was there.
“He went to say goodbye and he, rather than kiss me on the cheek, he leaned in on the lips.”
Huddy, whom Trump knew because she co-hosted “Fox & Friends” on the weekends, said she assumed Trump’s lip kiss was just confusion: “Oh, we went the wrong way,” she said.
She also said she wasn’t offended. “I thought, ‘This is interesting.’”
It should be noted that this was her expression on the show when she said that:
Huddy said she was surprised he went for her lips but “didn’t feel threatened.” In fact, she brought a friend back to Trump Tower so that the future president could give them a tour of “The Apprentice” set.
Huddy believes Trump was single at the time, and, after checking the math, host Bill Schulz said it was possible he wasn’t engaged to Melania Trump at the time of the kiss.
She says Trump referenced the kiss when he was Huddy’s guest on her syndicated series, “The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet.”
“He came up on stage and he turned around to the audience ― and, you know, there were 50 people there ― and he said, ‘I tried to hit on her, but she blew me off,’” Huddy remembered.
Huddy emphasized that at the time she wasn’t offended that he kissed her but that she has a different perspective now.
“Now that I’ve matured, I would’ve said, ‘Nope.’ At that time, I was making excuses.”
HuffPost reached out to the White House for comment, but it did not immediately respond. Huddy commented further on Twitter on Friday evening after the New York Post picked up the story.