Gayle King was missing from Monday’s CBS This Morning, after attending a wedding in Europe, but when she returned Tuesday she didn’t hold back from commenting on the recent developments involving former CBS CEO Les Moonves, who stepped down Sunday after more women came forward with sexual misconduct claims against him.
Specifically, King took issue with Monday’s news, revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, that CBS won’t release the results of its investigation into Moonves.
“I would think, how can we have this investigation and not know how it comes out? Les Moonves has been on the record, he says, listen, he didn’t do these things, that it was consensual, that he hasn’t hurt anybody’s career. I would think it would be in his best interests for us to hear what the report finds out,” King said. “On the other hand, you have women who are coming forward, very credibly talking about something that’s so painful and so humiliating. It’s been my experience that women don’t come out and speak this way for no reason. They just don’t. They just don’t do it. And so I don’t know how we move forward if we don’t — we at CBS — don’t have full transparency about what we find.”‘
Later she added, “In our own house we must have transparency.”
King added that she was “sick of the story and sickened by everything that we keep hearing.”
And she said she’s thinking about Moonves’ wife, Julie Chen, who has taken a leave of absence from her own CBS show, The Talk, to be with her family.
“I feel for Julie Chen today. She’s in a very difficult position,” King said. “And Les Moonves has done wonderful things for this company, and we can’t forget that either. So, it’s just a bad situation all the way around.”