Herman Cain Denies Sexual Harassment Allegations

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain denied allegations of sexual harassment Monday following a report that he treated two women inappropriately in the 1990s.

A report, which first surfaced in Politico, suggested that Cain had sexually harassed two female subordinates while he chaired the National Restaurant Association.

In an interview with PBS' Newshour, Cain was asked if there was any behavior on his part that may have been considered inappropriate. The businessman answered:

"In my opinion, no. But, as you would imagine, it's in the eye of the person who thinks that maybe I crossed the line."

"I worked for the Department of the Navy, the Coca-Cola company, Pillsbury, Burger King, Godfather's Pizza. Years and years and years of working in the business environment working around men, women, all types of people."

"Never, never have I been accused of any sort of sexual harassment. I have never sexually harassed anyone. This false allegation to now come up is kind of baffling."

Herman Cain, a former pizza company CEO, headed the association from 1996-99. The women later left the group after reaching undisclosed financial settlements.

Cain said he only recalls innocuously commenting about the height of one of the women who complained about inappropriate behavior.

"As I have been beat upon all day about this I've been thinking, 'what could it have been?' And then I did recall one mention in the formal complaint that my general counsel shared, and that was, one day I was gesturing standing near this lady that she was as tall as my wife," he said, gesturing to his own chin. "Five feet tall."

"Because my wife comes up to my chin, and I was gesturing to this lady, standing next to her, almost shoulder to shoulder, saying you're about the same height as my wife. That was mentioned in the allegation, to my surprise. And so that was the only thing I could recollect that was mentioned as one of the possible things."

Once a formal charge had been launched, Cain said he directed his general counsel and the head of the human resources department to investigate.

"They then went and reviewed the formal charge, worked on the situation for months, and came back and said, it's baseless. No facts," Cain said.

Not to get all political here, but it's funny how we were reporting the Rielle Hunter scandal for like a year before anyone else, while both Cain and his competitor Rick Perry have been hit hard by the media over scandals with seemingly less merit.

Just saying.

Cain has risen to the top of many polls as he seeks the Republican nomination for president. Time will tell if voters consider this as baseless as he does.