Jane Fonda knew about Weinstein's sex abuse for a year - here's why she kept silent

Actress and activist Jane Fonda blamed "male entitlement" for Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and assault accusations, but then admitted she knew about them and did nothing.

Here's Fonda talking about what she knew:

What did she say?

Fonda was talking about what people have to do to curtail the kind of behavior Weinstein is accused of when she revealed that she knew about it for a year beforehand. She made the comments during a CNN interview published Thursday.

"We have to believe the women who come forward, we have to speak out," she said. "I found out about Harvey about a year ago, and I'm ashamed that I didn't say anything right then."

"Why didn't you, you're so bold," asked Christiane Amanpour, referring to her political activism.

"I - I don't," Fonda stumbled, "I was not that bold, because I guess it hadn't happened to me, and so I didn't feel it was my place."

"What did you know?" Amanpour pressed.

"One of the women who has spoken out," she explained, "Rosanna Arquette, told me, and uhm, you know, it came as a shock and a great disappointment. This male entitlement."

Fonda refused to say exactly what Arquette told her. Amanpour asked her if she knew that the abuse was an "open secret" in Hollywood.

"I didn't realize that," she said, "but I believe that it's, apparently it was so common that everybody must have known, and of course, these kind of men, it's not only sexual predation, these tend to be men who treat other people not well.

Why does this matter?

Hollywood has become a morass of accusations and recriminations from the Weinstein scandal as actors come out with their stories of abuse and decry the silence from the industry. Conservatives have taken the story to show the hypocrisy of the left-wing celebrities who have excoriated conservatism for so long.

In fact, Fonda had just mocked President Donald Trump at a recent awards show, calling him a "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot."