Brooke Baldwin says she cried privately after Megyn Kelly “slut-shamed” her by falsely claiming she had slept with four men — and alleges the fallout ultimately cost her “tens of thousands of dollars.”
The former CNN anchor, 47, revealed the emotional and financial toll of their summer feud in her latest Substack newsletter, writing that what particularly stung was seeing another woman publicly spread a false account of her sex life.
“While I was in it — that horrible weekend this summer and the days after — my tears in private weren’t really about me,” Baldwin wrote.
“They were about that. That a woman did this. Falsely. Publicly. Slut-shamed me.”
Baldwin said the episode continued to reverberate after Kelly’s original comments, claiming the fallout became costly as she sought to defend herself.
“Her lie kept multiplying — a lie about choices with my own body that I never even made,” Baldwin wrote.
“And it cost me tens of thousands of dollars to defend a version of myself that never existed.”
Baldwin did not specify what accounted for the alleged expenses.
The bad blood dates to July, when Kelly devoted a segment of “The Megyn Kelly Show” to a remarkably candid Substack entry in which Baldwin discussed dating, sex and four men she had the opportunity to sleep with.
Kelly told her audience that Baldwin’s “work and her mission include banging four men in a month.”
Baldwin had explicitly written that she rejected all four opportunities.
“What did I do?” Baldwin wrote in the July post. “Turned them all down. Every. Single. One.”
The former cable news anchor nevertheless left little mystery about her attitude toward sex.
“And y’all know… I love sex. If I may be so bold, I’m pretty damn good at it,” Baldwin wrote.
She also said casual sex was “very much on the table” and that she had “thought about it. A lot,” but explained that she was deliberately abstaining during that period of her life.
Kelly subsequently acknowledged that she and her team had not read Baldwin’s full post, which was behind a paywall.
“Well, as it turns out, we should have paid to read the rest of her stupid Substack, which we didn’t, because, who gives a s–t about Brooke Baldwin, to be honest?” Kelly said at the time.
“And in the paid pieces of the article, she confesses she actually did not have casual sex with these men!”
Baldwin fired back at Kelly at the time, accusing her of failing “Journalism 101” and spreading a false account that was subsequently amplified on other platforms and by other outlets.
“My last Substack was not about me having casual sex. It was about me choosing not to,” Baldwin wrote in July.
Baldwin wrote that there are women who “instead of lighting a torch, do the opposite” and accused Kelly of trying to “snuff someone else’s out.”
Baldwin said she has not found compassion for Kelly and may never do so.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve arrived at some Hallmark kumbaya bulls–t ending where I’ve found compassion for her,” Baldwin wrote.
“I haven’t. I’m not there. Maybe I never will be, and I’m not apologizing for that.”
Earlier this month, Baldwin alleged that her estranged father, Steve Baldwin, repeatedly struck her with a belt when she was a child, recalling “full-body panic” as she anticipated the punishment.
“One time, I got belted so many times I woke up black and blue on my backside,” Baldwin wrote.
Steve Baldwin disputed his daughter’s account when contacted by the Daily Mail.
“For 40 years, no member of my family has mentioned this alleged incident to me. I have no recollection of it ever having taken place,” he told the outlet.
“All I can say is that I love my daughter unconditionally, and I always will.”
Brooke Baldwin stood by her account in a subsequent statement to the Daily Mail.
“I remember it like it was yesterday. I know what happened to me, and I stand by every word I wrote.”
The Post has sought comment from Baldwin and representatives for Kelly.
