Former President Bill Clinton sought Tuesday to placate critics outraged after insisting in an NBC News “Today” show interview that he owes no personal apology to former White House intern Monica Lewinsky for their White House affair during his Oval Office tenure.
Many political and media people recently began re-evaluating the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which highlights women’s stories of abuse by powerful men in superior/subordinate relationships.
Clinton and Lewinsky infamously engaged in an affair during Clinton’s first term in office and into the beginning of his second. The scandal led to Clinton’s impeachment by the Republican-led House of Representatives in December 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate, which was also Republican controlled, declined to convict Clinton.
During the NBC show that aired Monday, Clinton angrily defended his decision not to apologize personally to Lewinsky after offering a group public apology publicly years ago. Clinton’s comments sparked a widespread bipartisan backlash Tuesday.
Clinton responded to his critics Monday night during a joint appearance with co-author James Patterson at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City to promote their new novel, “The President Is Missing.”
Moderator Walter Mosley, also an author, noted that the NBC interview “caused kind of a hubbub, and I wanted to know before we started the thing in general, did you want to say anything about that?” Mosley asked Clinton.
Clinton replied, “I do, actually. Just because I got — the truth is the hubbub was I got hot under the collar because of the way the questions were asked. And I think what was lost were the two points that I made that are important to me.
“The suggestion was that I never apologized for what caused all the trouble for me 20 years ago. So first point is, I did. I meant it then, I meant it now. I apologized to my family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, and to the American people before a panel of ministers in the White House, which was widely reported. So I did that — I meant it then and I mean it today. I live with it all the time.”
“The second is that I support the #MeToo movement and I think it’s long overdue. And I have always tried to support it in the decisions and policies that I advanced,” Clinton continued. “Beyond that, I think it would be good if we could go on with the discussion.”
After the audience applauded Clinton, Mosley failed to press him on whether he would reach out to Lewinsky to apologize personally and dropped the topic altogether.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that “it sounded like Bill Clinton took a poll from one interview to the next, they poll-tested a response, and he decided, ‘You know what? I better apologize more because they will come after me next.’
“But Bill Clinton epitomizes you know, sort of the aggressor — not the victim. He thinks he’s still somehow a victim,” Paul said. “And in no world was it ever appropriate for the president of the United States to be having sex under his desk with a 20-year-old. No way can that even be consented to.”
Paul also accused the “mainstream media” of being “complicit with” Clinton “for decades” by defending the affair as consensual.
Related: Key Ally Turns on Clinton for Not Apologizing to Lewinsky
“Well, to tell you the truth, you can’t really have an appropriate consensual relationship with a 20-year-old intern in your office,” Paul noted. “That is a definition of sexual harassment, it’s a definition of using the power of your office to get something you want. It was always wrong.”
Citizens United President David Bossie, former deputy campaign manager to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, said Monday on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that Clinton’s refusal to apologize personally to Lewinsky is the “perfect, quintessential Bill Clinton.”
“He is the victim here. He is the victim, as the president of the United States who used his position of power over a 20-year-old intern. He is the victim after all these years. It’s ridiculous,” Bossie said. “Bill Clinton only admitted the truth, which was that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, only because the special prosecutor got a subpoena to draw his blood to force him to admit that he left physical evidence on a blue dress.”
“That is how disgusting the facts were that we had to deal with in the ’90s,” Bossie added.
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
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