A former Fox News anchor said Donald Trump once tried to kiss her on the lips after he took her out to lunch in 2005.
Juliet Huddy shared the story on the internet radio show “Mornin!!! with Bill Schulz” on Friday, noting that though she was caught off-guard by Trump’s physical advance, she “wasn’t offended” by the encounter.
“He took me for lunch at Trump Tower, just us two. He said goodbye to me in an elevator while his security guy was there … rather than kiss me on the cheek he leaned in to kiss me on the lips,” she said. “I wasn’t actually wasn’t offended by it, I was kind of like, ‘This is… interesting’.”
At the time, Huddy was an anchor on “Fox & Friends” and was under the assumption that she was meeting with Trump for a possible appearance on “The Apprentice.”
“Now that I’ve matured, I look at things a little bit differently,” Huddy said. “I think I would’ve said something like, ‘Woah, no’. But at the time I was a little shocked. I thought maybe he didn’t mean to do it, maybe I leaned in wrong. I was kind of making excuses.”
Huddy was one of the women who reportedly received a settlement payment “in the high six figures” after she accused former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment.
Trump has come under fire for similar behavior. In a leaked tape from a 2005 “Access Hollywood” appearance, Trump was caught bragging about sexually assaulting women and kissing them without their permission.
“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” he said. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Also on Friday, Huddy recalled another encounter with Trump, when he was a guest on her syndicated morning talk show “The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet” and bragged to the audience about the kiss in the elevator.
“Trump was a guest and he came on stage,” she said. “He turned around to the audience — and there were 50 people there — and he said ‘I tried hitting on her but she blew me off.’ It wasn’t on air, it was to the audience and the producers, but he was laughing about it.”
TheWrap has reached out to the White House for comment.