Goodbye Charlie: CBS News morning anchor and correspondent Charlie Rose was suspended yesterday after The Washington Post reported that eight women claim he made sexual advances including lewd phone calls and walking naked in front of them. Public Broadcasting also announced it will stop airing his well-regarded interview program, the “Charlie Rose” show.

Co-hosts Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King sat shoulder to shoulder this morning as they reported the news. At the end, a stern O’Donnell said, “This will be investigated. This has to end.”

A more emotional King said, “I’m really struggling. How do you, what do you say, when someone you deeply care about has done something that is so horrible.? How do you wrap your brain around that?”

Rose, 75, is one of the senior statesmen of television news, an institution unto himself, who also has contributed to “60 Minutes.”

The Post report says, “The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the ‘Charlie Rose’ show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011.”

Rose didn’t deny it. He issued a statement saying, “I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”

Ahh, the old, “I thought it was consensual” gambit.

Et Two, Al?

The bodies in the national sexual harassment purge keep piling up — too many to name. A second woman came forward to say Minnesota Sen. Al Franken touched her inappropriately when they had their picture taken together at the Minnesota State Fair back in 2010.

Lindsay Menz, 33, told CNN, Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear.”

Franken had been a senator for two years at the time. He issued a statement saying he doesn’t remember having the picture taken, but feels badly that Menz felt “disrespected.”

The NY Times has suspended its star White House correspondent Glenn Thrush following a report by Vox that described allegations by three women, as well as the article’s author Laura McGann, that they were subjected to unwanted groping and kissing and “hazy sexual encounters that played out under the influence of alcohol.”

Thrush issued a statement saying, “Over the past several years, I have responded to a succession of personal and health crises by drinking heavily. During that period, I have done things that I am ashamed of, actions that have brought great hurt to my family and friends.” He said he’s re-entering rehab.

Along the Roy Moore front, the White House is giving mixed signals. On Fox News yesterday Brian Kilmeade asked Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, “So, vote Roy Moore?”

She answered, “I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through.” Translated: better a child molester than a Democrat.

International Affairs: President Trump re-listed North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, ratcheting up the pressure to force the Hermit Kingdom to back off its nuclear missile and bomb development.

“Should have happened a long time ago,” Trump told reporters, taking a customary dig at his predecessors.

North Korea was put on the list in 1988 and taken off in 2008 by President George W. Bush.

The president said the Treasury Department today will announce new and tougher sanctions on North Korea. “It will be the highest level of sanctions,” he said.

Monopoly: The Justice Department is suing to block AT&T’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner, The NY Times reports. Some experts say it could be a tough fight for the government because it’s a merger between non-competing businesses. And it’s a strange fight to pick for such a pro-business administration.

The government has also pushed for Time Warner to sell CNN, seen by some as a political vendetta against the network Trump denounces as “Fake News.”

Big Oil: Nebraska has approved a leg of the Keystone XL pipeline that would run through the state, removing one of the major blockades to building the disputed pipeline. The state did alter the approved route, moving it east to coincide with the existing Keystone pipe that suffered a major leak the other day.

Some farmers and ranchers learned that their land will be spared while others were shocked to learn they are now in the path. One man said, “We will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

The Obit Page: Della Reese, who starred in the treacly and long-running television series “Touched by an Angel,” has died at age 86. Reese was the supervisor of an angel played by Roma Downey, who coached the living through their earthly problems.

Reese was a well-known gospel and blues singer who broke out in 1957, named by Billboard, Variety, and Cash Box as the year’s most promising “girl singer.”

Coffee Klatch: The Starbucks chain has once-again stirred up controversy with something so innocuous as its Christmas cup. A couple of years ago, coffee addicts got mad because the generic red cups were not Christmasy enough.

This year’s cup has swirling designs that feature a pair of hands — unidentifiable as male or female — holding each other. This moved BuzzFeed to speculate that the cup is “totally gay.” The conservative website The Blaze jumped on and Fox News suggested Starbucks is pushing “a gay agenda.”

Because, you know, there’s no question that drinking out of that cup will make you gay.

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