Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - HR Is Not Your Friend: Gretchen Carlson on Fox News, NDAs & Breaking the Silence

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

With Women’s History Month upon us, Anthony talks with trailblazer Gretchen Carlson. Gretchen takes us back to her decision to go public and stand up against then Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, she details her work bringing harassment and retaliation issues front and centre in the workplace. Gretchen talks candidly with Anthony about what more needs to be done, and whether the predators are still being protected.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm Anthony Scaramucci and welcome. to Open Book, where I talk with some of the most interesting and brilliant minds in our world today. In this show, I'll bring on guests in business, politics, entertainment, and more to go deep into a piece of their work, whether it's a highly anticipated book, an in-depth feature story, or an opinion piece that has captured my attention. We'll dig into why it matters to you and how their work is shaping our future. As we continue to celebrate Women's History Month here on

Open Book, there are countless women who, who have fought tirelessly and courageously for equality, justice, and opportunity in the United States. One of these women is my friend Gretchen Carlson. In this conversation, we discussed Gretchen's decision to go public with harassment claims against Fox News. The changes at Fox News and the broader media landscape, her work in government passing two bipartisan landmark bills last year and her honest opinion on where we are today and what still needs change. Joining us now on Open Book is Gretchen Carlson, a former colleague of mine and somebody who always was very nice to me on the air, which I remember fondly, Gretchen. So thank you for that.

She is the author of a New York Times bestseller, getting real and be fierce, an amazing voice, a speaker, a trailblazer, but also, you know, somebody I've gotten to know, Gretchen. I like you a great deal. And so I'm a supporter of your efforts, as you know. I want to talk to you a little bit about everything, because we're talking about Miss America, talking about a highly successful journalist and author, but you're also helping to pay the way in, let's call it, the Me Too movement. I sort of feel it's like a We Too movement, not just a Me Too movement, because everybody's involved in it. And I have a daughter and a mom and a sister. And so it's important for me to make people feel safe. So I like to call it the We Too movement, but let's call it the Me Too Movement.

but let's call the Me Too movement. Tell us where it all started. Well, Anthony, thanks so much for having me on. So it was great to see you and thank you for supporting Lift Our Voices, which is the nonprofit that I created after my Fox story six and a half years ago already. So that's really, you know, where it started for me, I guess my life is testament to the fact that life works in mysterious ways. And certainly jumping off the cliff and coming forward at Fox News against the former CEO and Chairman Roger Ill's with regard to sexual harassment was something I know. never envisioned myself doing, nor did I ever expect it to turn out the way that it did in igniting an international movement. But I'm grateful every day that I'm helping millions of people,

most of whom I'll never meet. And this has just become my passion project to make workplaces safer. You know, I think that we thought we had solved this, right? I think a lot of women and men thought that, this kind of crap doesn't happen anymore at work. And this was really an eye-opening experience for the American public when they realized that number one, it was still happening, and number two, it was being covered up. And that's what I'm fighting against. I'm fighting to give people their voice back. And I love the title of your podcast, Open Book, because unfortunately, you mentioned the books that I've written, but I cannot be an open book about what happened to me at Fox because of the silencing mechanism I had to sign called an NDA, which is one of the things I'm fighting against. Well, you know, there's a lot here to unpack. So I want to start with

some of that because I think that the general public, you know, listen, I grew up in a blue collar family. So my friends and family members that have watched you over the years, when somebody says an NDA to them, they don't really get it 100%. So I want you to take us through it. So you had situations that made you very uncomfortable in the workplace, very well documented. They decided that they were going to settle with you and they made you sign a non-disclosure agreement in NDA so that you wouldn't share the sort of details of what took place. So you want to stop that movement, so to speak, because from a public policy perspective, if you can't sign an NDA, it'll force more of responsibility on executives.

Men are women, for that matter, but let's face it, it's mostly men who are doing things that are egregious, a result of which it'll put more pressure on them, were actually they'll end up getting fired as opposed to just the woman is upset, she gets paid out and signs an NDA. What did I miss? Yeah, that's really sort of the vicious cycle that's been going on for the last 40, 50 years. I go all the way back to Anita Hill. I think you and I are about the same age.

You know, that was one of the first stories I covered as a journalist. I'm lying about my age, Gretchen. You can continue to fool people. But ironically, it's one of the first stories I covered and I was promptly sexually harassed on my first job in television. right after that as well. But I bring that up because my own theory is that that's when all the cover-ups inside companies really started because that really gave, you know, a name to what sexual harassment was. And I think a lot of companies at that time were like, oh, we better start doing sexual harassment

training because now everyone's talking about this. But at the same time, I think a bunch of smart lawyers got together and said, how the hell do we make sure we do not have an Anita Hill at our office? And that's when they started using these silencing mechanisms and really ramping them up. So there's, there's two silencing mechanisms. You talk about NDAs, non-disclosure agreements. One third of all Americans sign those on their first day of work, including me. So on your first day, you're basically walking around with a muzzle on at work for anything bad that happens to you later on. And then something bad happens to you and you want to come forward and they're like, oh, ha, ha, ha, the joke's on you. You sign an NDA so you're already silenced and there's no way you can talk about this.

The second thing that you sign on your first day of work is something called a forced arbitration clause. And when I say that, people go, huh? Nobody knows that they're signing this, but this is what exploded after Anita Hill. In 1991, only 2% of all employees had these arbitration clauses in their employment contracts. But by 2024, 84% of us in America will have these in our contracts. And this is a device also of silencing people. In simple terms, it means that if you want to come forward about anything bad that happens to you at work, you can't go to an open court. You've already signed on the dotted line that you're going to go to something called forced arbitration, which is a secret process where nobody ever finds out about it. The deck stacked against you from the start. And it protects the

predators because nobody knows this is going on. You get pushed out of the workplace. They get to keep working. And so the vicious cycle continues. So these are the two things that I decided to roll up my sleeves after I talked to so many survivors after my story, they'd all been silenced in this way. And I decided I had to do something about it to the best of my ability. So I started walking the halls of Congress. And, you know, I'm really proud to tell you. And again, thanks for supporting us. And lift our voices, we passed two bipartisan pieces of legislation last year in the most hyper-political time of our generation. You know, I'm so incredibly proud of that because this is actually going to be my legacy. I don't really give a damn about any other TV interviews I've done or presidents I've interviewed or people I've hobnobbed with.

None of that matters to me as far as how monumental it was to get these two laws passed. So what it means now is if you experience sexual misconduct in the workplace, you no longer have to be forced into the secret chamber of arbitration. You get to come forward if you want to and go to an open court. Number two, the Speak Out Act was also passed in December, meaning that you no longer have to be subject to an NDA for sexual misconduct if you sign one on your first day of work. So, pre-dispute NDA. So we've accomplished a lot, Anthony, but we still have a whole lot more to do because I'm fighting not just for sexual misconduct. I'm fighting for any disenfranchised group in the workplace. So race, gender, age, LGBTQ plus discrimination, disability. All those people are still subject to all

these silencing mechanisms. And so we still have a tremendous amount of work to do at lift our voices. You listen, I'm obviously blown away impressed by you. And I just want to say this to you and I want to get you to react to this because you had a two o'clock show on Fox. You were gracious enough to invite me on. Then I came on. I walked onto your set. We had a great conversation. It could have been geopolitical or economic or so forth. But at the time you and I met behind the scenes, okay, in your first book getting real, you had a tremendous amount going on. You had a lot of commotion going on. You were being harassed. ass, you were being intimidated, yet you were showing up for work. You could never tell. I have to confess this to you, and I almost am embarrassed by this. I had no idea, Gretchen, that any of that was going on. And so as a human being, from one human being to another, I have a heartfelt empathy for that or issue with that. I think about it if it was my daughter or my wife or my sister, mom, or something like that. I want you to address that if you don't mind, okay? Tell us a little bit about the tend to that was there. And then you had to make a decision because there were other women at the same time going

through something similar. And they were like, okay, geez, I have to shut up because I need to make this money or I need to do this. There's a lot of equivocation that happens when this goes on. Again, I'm not blaming them either, by the way, because I understand that as well. But tell us about those feelings, the feelings that you had in 2015 and 16. And then what caused you to finally go in the direction that you ultimately wouldn't? Yeah, I wish I could tell you everything. This is when my brain goes and to lawyer mode and and I have to really choose my words carefully because I do have that NDA too, actually. I can't share everything. I'm more interested in the feelings and less about the facts. Ironically, I can't even talk about my feelings. That's how broad the stupid NDAs are. Well, that's good to know then. That's why it's important to prevent these things. You don't want you to be able to say, you know, that you were, they don't want to be, you to be able to say how much it sucked. Okay. So let me just give you a hypothetical. So pretend this isn't about me. It was like walking down a hallway every day with a knife in my back

and blood streaming out and me looking behind wondering who was coming after me next. I'm just giving you a hypothetical for what a movie could be about. And the problem with these NDAs, if you sign them on the first day of work, is you can't warn anybody else. And so I had signed one of these. So I couldn't tell anyone else what my personal experience was. Arguably, I wasn't even supposed to to tell my husband, but, you know, I did. I told me, I'm thankful and still blessed to have my parents in my life. I told them, I found out from my lawyers that I could tell my, my minister, which actually ended up being one of the final things that made me jump because my grandfather had been a minister. And this minister friend of mine, we cried together a lot. And she took my hand

at the end, and she said to me, your grandfather is looking down on you. And he's telling you to do it. and that was just like, and she said he's proud of you. And that was just, you know, and then I looked in my children's eyes and I had no idea what the hell was going to happen to them or to their mom. And I did it. I think what helped me to jump also, Anthony, was the fact that Fox fired me. You know, they took away what I had killed myself for over 30 years of getting to the pinnacle of the television industry.

And I was good at it. And they took that away from me. They fired me. And that, you know, all those, the confluence of those things all came together at the same time. And I decided to jump off. And I often say that there was absolutely no safety net below me. Sure. I thought I was going to come home and cry my eyes out for the rest of my life and spend more time with my dog.

Needless to say, what the safety net became in my life were all these women started reaching out to me. And I was like, holy shit. This is an epidemic. This is an effing epidemic. All these women have been pushed up. out of the workplace. And the second epidemic was that they'd all been silenced. And that's when I decided to roll up my sleeves and get to work because I was like, I have to honor all these people who have never had a voice. That's what made me write the book, be fierce, and then, you know, just moved into all

of this advocacy work that I'm doing. I'm blessed to have my family. My kids actually, I found out that courage is contagious. My kids got it from me now. And it's been a blessing for me to watch them grow up, especially my son, because we spend a lot of time talking about empowering women to stand up and speak up, but really the crux of this whole problem is men. It's getting to our boys young, that they learn to respect women in the workplace the same way that they look at their mothers. And I know I've given that to my kids. And my son, one quick story, he saw me on CNN one night talking about all of this. And he was waiting for me when I got home in the kitchen. He said, mom, he said, is it true what that other woman said on TV that once every 83 seconds in our country,

somebody is assaulted or harassed, a woman? And I said, I'm so sorry to tell you that that is true. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, Mommy, as a young boy, I want to help fix that. Well, listen, I don't want to interrupt. You see, I've learned from the Gretchen Carlson Good interviewers when someone is saying something so meaningful, keep your mouth shut. I want to ask this. I think this is enough of a hypothetical where perhaps you can answer it. What do you wish you knew now about your Fox and Roger Ailes experience, like meaning what do you wish that you knew then, that you now know now about it? I wish I, you know, would have had the courage to stand up earlier. I probably would have saved a lot of hell for people.

But then I could say that about everyone else who never stood up either. I wish in my early 20s when I was sexually assaulted twice that I would have said something. Instead, I stuffed it down inside of my heart and hoped it would never come back up like so many other women. are socialized to do. We're not supposed to talk about it. I didn't even call it sexual assault until I was writing Be Fierce. Until after my experience at Fox News, I admitted that these other two things had happened to me. Right. And it was just me trying to break into the TV business when I was Miss America, actually, and I cold called high level executives, some of whom are still living. And they sexually assaulted me, both of them in a car, not together in different episodes, three weeks apart from each other. And I never ever told anyone until I wrote my first, getting real. So I think, you know, look, it's about all of us deciding that we're going to stand up and speak up earlier. And it's easier said than done. With all the women who still reach out to me,

I say to them, coming forward is such a personal choice because you're still going to be maligned and you're still going to be retaliated against. I'm working too thin nail to change that, but it's likely still going to happen to you because changing culture and the way we look at these issues is tougher than passing bipartisan legislation. Tougher. You know, my advice to them is, I'm here for you and I will listen and try to guide you, but it's your personal decision because you will likely lose your career still. And that's the piece of the puzzle. That's my ultimate goal to change that part of it. Do you think that newsrooms have changed at all since your outing, if you will, since your declaration of what is actually going on? Do you think Fox News has changed at all? Is there been a transformation in any way?

I'd love to answer that question, but I can't. All I can say to you is that if they've changed, then why don't they, let me out of my NDA. I've asked to be let out of my NDA. If everything's changed there, then what's the problem? So that should answer it. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, the problem is obvious. They don't want the past either it hasn't changed or they don't want the past to become their president in terms of the news cycle. I want to talk about this legislation, though, that you worked the past last year. Congratulations. I think it's amazing. Go into a little bit more detail about the bill. Why was it needed and what was the process like to get there? You know, I had an 11-day horrific experience in Washington. I got my PhD and how these people

operate. It is very hard to go from an idea to getting quote-unquote bipartisan legislation bass. So take us through that sausage making, if you don't mind. Yeah. I mean, look, it's really easy to introduce legislation. If you ask members of Congress how many bills they've introduced, they'll probably stand up and say thousands. And then when you ask them how many they've actually gotten past and they say zero or one, that proves how difficult it is. I think that what helped me in this process was that specifically with Republican members of Congress, who arguably had watched Fox News and I was there for a long time, they knew who I was. And I think that they thought that if that could have happened to me at Fox News, maybe they should listen to me. And so that's how I got in the door and got meetings.

By the way, I've been a registered independent my whole life. So I see things on both sides. I voted for both Republicans and Democrats. And I know people often think like you had to be a Republican to work at Fox News, which was not the case for me. But I think that's helped me to be able to tell my story as much as I can to Republican members of Congress. And I think they trust me.

Quite honestly, I needed at least 10 senators, right, who were Republican to get past the filibuster to pass any kind of legislation. And even though the House then was controlled by Democrats, I still needed a wide swath of bipartisan support to send a message. So I think that that was that was my first strategy was to try to go after Republicans first. I also went after Republicans who were retiring because I felt like they would be more bold and would make with side with them. This tends to be more of a democratic issue, getting rid of these silencing mechanisms.

So I had a lot of strategies in place. And then I also decided to just take a bite out of the apple instead of going for the whole thing in one big fell swoop because I knew we would never get Republican support for all these other things that I'm talking about for other protected classes. And so I decided to just, okay, let's tackle forced arbitration and NDAs just for sexual misconduct and see how far we can get with this. And I will tell you that I saw a lot of hearts and minds changing over this five-year process of trying to get these bills passed. I think that members of Congress, just like the general public, started to realize that this movement is not going away. And if they know me,

they know I'm relentless. And so I'm going to keep pounding on the door. And, And I saw them change their hearts and minds about this. And slowly but surely, I got more and more Republicans to come to my side on this. You know, so after a five-year journey, when it went to the arbitration bill, went for a vote in the House, we got 113 Republicans. That is seriously bipartisan. Thought we were going to get 25. Three days later, it went to the Senate and unanimously it passed in the Senate. And then my strategy proved to be, I think, a good one because a mere seven months later,

I passed the Speak Out Act, the NDA bill. And that was my strategy all along is take a bite out of the apple, get people to come to the table, talk about these issues, and then move on with the next iteration of it. And that's exactly what we're doing. And quite honestly, now, Anthony, in 2003, I'm already moving forward with going back to the table again on arbitration. And, okay, who can we all agree on that we should protect? check next. And so I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag next, but I'm going to tell you

that this year I plan to pass another bill. Well, listen, I'm rooting for you. I want to test something on you and I want to get your reaction. So I recently interviewed Jamie Fiore Higgins. She's the author of Bully Market. I think you know Jamie. She spoke out about her experiences at Goldman Sachs. She was very honest about how in the beginning she sort of felt complicit because she was trying to run her career and she was afflicted with these Me Too events and she looked the other way. I have this feeling that I'm going to test on you that there's a quote unquote machismo in the workplace. Okay, I'm being yelled at for interviewing the likes of you and Jamie Fiore Higgins. Why am I being yelled at? I'm being yelled at, well, because I'm not machismo or alpha enough,

meaning like there's an unspoken protocol. And so therefore, if you are siding with these women, then you're outside of the men's club, okay? Actually, I don't give a shit about that. It's my podcast, so I'm allowed to curse about it. If I gave a shit about it, I wouldn't be interviewing you, okay? If anything, I think we need to break through this nonsense. But I want to get your reaction of that. Am I right about that? Did you sense that at Fox that there was a sort of unspoken protocol? And then secondarily, what do you say about that? Okay, because every one of these men have wives that they wouldn't want sexually harassed. There were daughters that they wouldn't want sexually harassed.

Yet they want to walk around with this like machismo alpha fraternity-like swagger. So what's your reaction to all that? Well, first of all, real men stand up for women. So, uh, amen. Thank you. Thank you for that. And it's the only way we're going to change this vicious cycle. I mean, let's be real.

The world is still run by men. Okay. I don't love that part of it necessarily. I think we should have more female CEOs. We should have more females in higher positions of power. That's how we change all this crap. But as long as men still rule the world, we've got to get them on our side. So I extend the olive branch to men. I don't care how much you are. Come join my team. Come join what we're doing at Lift Our Voices. Change the policies at your company. Because you're pushing out the exact people you want to retain that increases your bottom line. A hundred percent.

Goldman ignored Jamie Gretchen. They should have brought her in. All they did it do. So you know why? We're going to do. have a town hall meeting. Jamie, describe what happened. I'm the CEO. I really don't want this happening. It's just bad for business. It slows us all down. Keep your, you know what, in your pants inside the office. I'm laughing a little bit about this. I'm not going to mention the name of the August journalist, journal, if you will, journal, so you'll get where I'm going. But I had a six month where people were looking at me, accusing me, the journalist was. No one was inside my office. They went down LinkedIn and they identified every single woman that worked at Skybridge and called them and said, did Anthony Scaramucci sexually harass you?

These women are calling me saying, I don't know why this guy's asking me this. Of course, you didn't do that. Finally, I had to call the editor-in-chief. I said, okay, you're working on this for six months. You can't find anybody. How much longer are you guys going to do this for? The point being is that the fish stinks from the head down. If you are sending a message to people, Fox could do that, CNN could do that, ABC News.

I mean, it's sort of like an orgy going on at ABC News, apparently. I don't know. But you could basically fish stinks on the head down. This is how we're going to operate. If you don't like it, leave. Yep. So how do you get more men to speak like that? Not with the cursing, of course, but you know what I mean.

The general, the general, hey, enough is enough. Yeah. Well, look, you're exactly right about how this all works. It's all about power. Okay. And that's why the way in which you described the machismo men, it's hard to give up power. It's hard to accept change. That's why I go on my Twitter feed someday.

Not everyone likes what I'm doing because I'm disrupting the system. So power is very difficult to give up. That is what this is all about. And you're right. It starts at the top. And so what I try to do is get to CEOs because those are the people that can actually make a change. Imagine the change in dynamic. If a CEO at a company gets everyone together and says, I will not tolerate this.

And if this happens to you, you come to me directly. and I will make sure that we do an independent investigation, and I will try to preserve your job and we'll get rid of the bad actor. That changes the entire dynamic of how things work inside. Instead, what currently happens the majority of the time is employees go to HR thinking they're doing the right thing, and HR's not your friend. They never will be. They've done a great PR job of making employees feel like that's the place to go and they're looking out for you, and they're not, because they get their paycheck from the company. They're doing everything in their power to protect the company. So now you go to HR and if you have a forced arbitration clause or an NDA, you're screwed.

And they look at you and go, you're going over here to the secret chamber. No one's ever going to hear from ever again. They don't tell you that right away. But they're like, oh, we're going to go to arbitration. It's going to be cheaper and quicker for you. And, you know, nobody will have to know about this. That's the system we need to change. And CEOs can change that in a split second by going to my website, lift our voices.

and taking the language I have for them right there and they can change their policies today. That's when I spend a lot of my time doing, Anthony now as I speak to CEOs and I tell them, the train has left the station, the movement's not going away, join me now, or eventually I will force you to do it because I will continue to pass more laws.

So if you want to get a good PR boost right now, do what's right, honor your employees, let them own their own voice, and let's move forward on this path together. I mean, it's very well said, Gretchen, which is why I think you are such a powerful, influential voice for the movement. What advice would you give the women out there? It's Women's History Month.

What would you say to women of all ages that are starting their careers or in the middle of their careers or finishing their careers? What would you say? Raise your sons to be vulnerable so that we can work on not just women being the ones that show emotions and that we deem that to be weak. encourage your sons to show their emotions. It'll make them better people in the long run and more respectful of others. When you get into the workplace, look at what you're signing on the first day.

Start asking on the first day instead of just saying, what's my vacation time and what's my health care, do you silence your workers? Do you have forced arbitration clauses and NDAs? Do you silence people on the first day on the job? Yeah. That's really important to normalize all of this, by the way. And then, you know, if something bad happens to you, I encourage people to talk about it and speak up because that's the only way that we can change the system. We've learned that by talking about

these issues is how we solve them. The more of us who talk about them, the more that we can solve it. But again, the onus should not just be on the women. The onus is not on women to change this system. The onus is on all of us to come together to understand the problem and to decide that we want to work together to change it. Shouldn't only be on the shoulders of women. Let me push back and do a little bit of role playing with you. And I'd want to want you to respond to it. So Gretchen, I hear all of that, but I'm a blue-collar kid. I went to State University. I now got this amazing job at this very high-profile corporation that's going to lift me from the lower middle class into the upper middle class, possibly even the wealthy class.

And there's a certain system in place. You know, I need this for my family. So I am going to shut up and I am going to sign this and I'm going to play with inside of their rules because I don't want to be a rabble rouser that could potentially get knocked out of this job that I desperately need that I think is so important for me. Your response to that is. I totally understand that, and that's why I'm doing the work for you, because I understand that there are people out there that don't have my profile or my megaphone or, quite honestly, the balls to go toe to toe to on it. They can't. They can't afford to, and I understand that. But for those who do decide to at least ask questions about these silencing mechanisms. That will start the process of normalizing it. And then I would

just point out that sometimes we forget the power that each of us individually has. And I will point to the Google walkout, if you remember that several years ago. Everyone in Google all across the world walked out on one day. What was that all about? People might remember the walkout, but they don't remember what it was about. And they don't remember that it was all on the shoulders of one woman who had the idea to do a walkout to protest arbitration clauses in Google contracts. Yeah. Everyone walked out, men, women in countries all around the world. And you know what happened the next day? Google took arbitration clauses out of their workplace. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what I had. Look at Rosa Parks, right? I mean, she got on the bus said, I'm too tired. I'm not moving. Sorry. Let's, you know. And then they got forced to change it. You know, and obviously change comes with pain, unfortunately. Okay. So I do this with all of my authors. I have five words or phrases. I ask you to react to them. Okay, so let's start out with the first one. Ready? Miss America. First classical violinist to ever win the title. The only reason I did it. And I paid for my last year at Stanford University with the scholarship money that I won.

It was a cool experience, though, right? Yeah, but look, again, my life works in mysterious ways. I was a tomboy growing up. I played football with my brothers outside. I happened to play a mean violin, and 50% of your points were based on talent. I quit the violin when I was 17, and my mom really, wanted me to keep playing. So she got a brochure in the mail about Miss America, saw how many points were talent. She called me up when I was studying at Oxford, actually, and she's like, I found something for you to do next summer. I was like, what? She said, Miss America, I'm like, are you high? But, you know, look, my mom's been an incredibly motivating part of my life and my rock. And, well, I'm sure in addition to your grandfather, she's very proud of you. So there was a tremendous amount of luck involved. But yes, it was a wonderful experience. It got me into television,

gave me amazing communication skills and made me realize that I can give a speech even without notes for an hour, which I was forced to do on many occasions when I was Miss America. Hashtag me too. Never in my wildest dreams believed in my life that I would be one of the instigating forces of the Me Too movement. Never planned it, not something that you would ever aspire to put on your resume. But thank God we're still in it. Fox News. originally went there for the opportunity of a lifetime to do what I always wanted to do, which was a Monday through Friday national morning television show that gave me the opportunity to show my smarts and also my personality and never envisioned that it would turn out the way that it did or that Fox News would be what it is today.

Megan Kelly. I don't really know Megan that well because we worked on opposite ends of the time spectrum. I would just say that I'm thankful that she also added. her voice to the Fox women who came forward after I jumped off the cliff. Roger Ailes. I heard through the grapevine later on that he actually feared me, and that makes me sleep at night. Interesting. Yeah, no, listen, I knew Roger, as you know, I mean, I had several interactions with him, and he was extremely talented, but I would just be very candid with you because I'm a man. I never saw that, but I wasn't close enough to him to be inside the perimeter to actually see any of that.

Not surprised by Andy, but of course, because, you know, I've worked in big corporations and I watch this go on. And I think this is the message. This is why I wanted to bring you on open book because the message is this is going on. It's not just at places like that or other media establishments. It's going on in large and small corporations around the country. And it hurts business. It's not good for business. Okay. Also, more. diversity leads to greater innovation and greater economic ideas and more money. Okay, so I don't care if you're a green lesbian from Mars. If you're talented, I want you at Skybridge and I want you to feel comfortable and safe working at Skybridge, period the end. And so your voice is so important for all

this stuff. And I know that you're only getting started, Gretchen. So before I let you go, what's next? We have some legislation you're working on. Is there another book in the offing? What else are you thinking about. Yes, more legislation on the horizon at the state level and also the federal level, putting together the first ever corporate rating system using my metrics of silencing mechanisms, which we will publish hopefully at the end of the year, which will be eye opening and where we will be giving companies a rating of whether or not they silence their people. We feel like employees need to know before they go to work, whether or not they're going to wear a muzzle. You know, raising my two beautiful children. And, you know, you never know. You never know what else

I'm going to get involved in. I never say no to any sort of like, what are you going to do next because my life has just led me in many, many different directions. So right now, that's what I'm focused on. I also have a startup, a tech company that I'm going to be starting up, but that's far away from an announcement. So stay tuned for that. Okay. Yeah. Well, I want to have you back. So hopefully we'll be able to talk about that when you come back. Gretchen Carlson, she's a New York Times bestselling author, getting real and be fierce. And she's a trailblazer. And I'm proud to call you friend, Gretchen. I really do appreciate you coming on Open Book. Thanks for having me and thanks for your support. Well, I have very fond memories of Fox News and even my time on Gretchen Carlson's television show.

And I liked Roger Ailes. My interactions with him were always professional and he was an incredibly smart, incredibly gifted, creative guy. I didn't see the underside of Roger Ailes primarily because I have an outdoor plumbing fixture. I find Gretchen to be incredibly candid and honest and brave. And I'm just wondering this open question about our society as it seeks changes and reforms, are we actually getting change reform and progress in our society? Or are we getting something more of a cover-up and a gloss over? It feels like every time there's a sexual harassment case or there's a claim against somebody, people sweep in with money and confidentiality agreement. So one of the things that Gretchen is doing is trying to unbundle those things. It may help. But the real story here is that this

has been going on for thousands of years. I don't think it's just related to American corporations. This is an axiomatic fact about people in power, sometimes abusing that power and taking advantage of people who don't have the power. It's happened in the Catholic Church. It's happened in large corporations. And it happens elsewhere. I'm just wondering if we're doing enough to to make things better. And my answer always is about leadership, the fish thinking from the head down and good people getting in the mix and explaining the problem, but explaining it in sort of a less intimidating sort of a way because I think what happens is people explain the problem to people and then

people are running around trying to cover up the problem as opposed to reforming. But anyway, those are my closing thoughts today on Open Book. I interviewed a woman by the name of Gretchen Carlson. and you may remember her. She had the 2 o'clock show on Fox. I used to go on her show. She had the blonde hair. She won the Miss America pageant.

Do you remember her or no? I think I do vaguely. She was very attractive, very pretty. Okay. But she also got sexually harassed at work. Okay, her boss, you know, propositions her for sex and intimidated her at work, and so she couldn't take it.

So she ended up telling on him, and he got fired. So what do you think of all that? I think that it's the right thing. Work is work, and I don't think that you should try to play on somebody at work. Okay. There's enough outside time to play on someone not at work. Okay. So who are some of the women that you like?

I know you like Catherine Graham. I remember you reading her biography, right? I like Catherine Graham. What about Barbara Walters? You liked her or no? I loved her. Okay. So why did you love Barbara Walters?

Because, I mean, I saw her documenting. and she was very astute. She was just a great person to follow. Great person to follow, right? She had a lot of Hutzpah, too, right? Yeah, a lot of Hutzpah. What about Rosanna Scotto? You remember meeting her when she came to the movie theater with us?

What do you love about Rosanna Scato? Because she's a natural and she speaks very well. She's natural and I love to watch her clothes. I have people watch her and I love to watch her clothes, which she's wearing. Right, and her hair and makeup, right? Because you were a makeup artist, right? So you like all that, right? Yes.

Okay. And I watch the Academy Awards because I like to see the fashion and the makeup. Even at 86, I'm still wearing a full face of makeup. Yes, we do know that, Ma. He spent a lot of time making your face up. All right. So let me ask you this question, though, Ma. Let's say one of your granddaughters was getting harassed at work by somebody that was being intimidating

and was like, you know, pushing them to do something they didn't want to do. What advice would you give one of your granddaughters? I'm not saying names, but one of my granddaughter. was bullied at school. And no matter who's related to me, I go at the juggler thing if I have to get involved. And I got involved and the kid stopped intimidating to my granddaughter. All right. So you went for the juggler.

Okay, which is, all right, so you don't like that. And you would figure out a way to get the person to stop, right? Yeah, he stopped and still. All right. What other advice would you give to young women, ma, about their careers? Try to absorb all the stuff that you can so that you can go. forward on your job. And if you get intimidated by a boss or somebody, make sure you're never to keep the straight line. I think you should be straight at work. But it's okay for the woman to

rat the boss out, though, if they're doing something inappropriate, right? Absolutely. Right, right. Yeah, time and a place for things, and that's not the right place for things, right? That's not the right place. But when the 85-year-old guy is hitting on you, a picololigoria, that's the right? I feel flattered. You like it, right? You like it. You like it. it. When they're buying your drinks at the bar, you're winking at them a little, right? Tell the truth. Winking, I don't have to. They come to me. Oh, you don't have to wink, right? They just show up, right? They just show up.

Mm-hmm. All right. I have one calling me right now where I'm talking to my son. All right. I'm going to let you take you, Ma. All right. All right, Ma, I love you. All right. Go take your boyfriend. I love you. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listen. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me to chat more about the discussions, it's at Scarabucci on Twitter. It's also at Scaramucci on Instagram.

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