Ana Navarro said she supports the return of her CNN co-worker Jeffrey Toobin, who was caught publicly masturbating, because he was not guilty of sexual harassment. He simply made a mistake, Navarro said on “The View” on Monday.
Toobin was fired from “The New Yorker” last October after he masturbated in front of his colleagues during a Zoom call while his computer camera was on. Toobin had spent 27 years at the magazine as a staff writer. Last week, after eight months off the network, Toobin returned to his other job as CNN’s chief legal analyst.
“Look, I think some instances of sexual harassment are black and white,” Navarro said. “Some instances are more nuanced. He was not sexually harassing somebody — he didn’t have the intent to harass somebody. He was sexually harassing himself, maybe.”
During an interview by CNN Newsroom’s Alisyn Camerota, Toobin defended himself by saying that he “didn’t think other people could see [him].” Navarro agreed, saying, “He was on a Zoom call, it was an accidental exposure.”
Navarro added that because the Zoom call was with the “The New Yorker” staff, Toobin should still be allowed back on CNN: “It was not a CNN call. It was with The New Yorker, from where he has been terminated and faced consequences. He has been off CNN for many months during some of the elections, during some of the hottest political and legal times.”
Navarro also said that viewers could have “grace” and not cancel Toobin for “make[ing] a stupid mistake.” “I also think CNN is a for-profit business. If viewers don’t like it, then they should make their views known,” she said. “If they want to have some grace, if they want to say, ‘We’re not going to cancel a guy because he made a stupid mistake’?”
Mistake or not, Toobin did something that, in his own words, is “indefensible,” yet he was not fired from CNN. As Emily Jashinsky puts it, “… we all know most people without the privilege of his media credentials would be let go immediately, and rightfully so.” Moreover, Toobin is “a sanctimonious moralizer who preens in the pages of New Yorker and on the airwaves of CNN, claiming a moral high-ground of which none of us are worthy.”
Navarro is known for being a blind supporter of CNN, adamantly defending its “balanced” reporting in the past.
My GOD woman have some pride. I mean I know you work at CNN… but still… https://t.co/kmFY3DdJ4O
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) June 14, 2021
She has also proclaimed she has a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual harassment. However, things appear to become far more “nuanced” when the perpetrator is her CNN co-worker.
What happened to “zero tolerance” @ananavarro? pic.twitter.com/0hJ0jklXjX
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) June 14, 2021
Source: The Federalist
